Genesis 27:36
Genesis 27:3636So Esau declared, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me twice. He took my birthright, and now he has taken my blessing.” Then he asked, “Haven’t you saved a blessing for me?”
Read as part of the Jacob and Esau narrative, with lessons about valuing spiritual inheritance. The Watchtower does not connect it to the meaning of "firstborn" in , where its teaching requires the word to mean first in order of creation.
Esau's own complaint is the evidence: "my birthright he has already taken, and now he has taken my blessing." Esau was born first, and he says his birthright has been taken. Both statements are true at once — which is only possible if the birthright is a position rather than a birth record. Nobody can take away the fact that you were born first. People can and do lose the firstborn's standing. That is the whole answer to the argument, and it comes from a story most Witnesses know well. Ask what Esau lost, given that he was undeniably the elder twin. Then , where God says of David "I will appoint him as my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth" — David being the youngest of eight. Appoint, not record. Firstborn is a rank God confers. Then read with 1:16 as one thought, as Paul wrote it: firstborn over all creation, FOR by him all things were created. The reason given for the title is that he made everything — which places him outside creation, not first within it. Compare , .