And Isaac his father answered and said unto him,.... Being willing to bestow what he could upon him, without lessening or breaking in upon the grant made to Jacob:behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above: this agrees with part of the blessing of Jacob, only the clauses are inverted, and no mention made of corn and wine; the land of Edom not being so fat and fruitful as the land of Canaan.
Castalio renders the words very differently, "thy habitation shall be from the fatness of the earth, or without the fatness of the earth, and without the dew of heaven from above" ; or otherwise he thinks Esau would have the same blessing with Jacob, and so would have no occasion of complaint or grief, or to have hated his brother and sought his life; to which may be added, that the land of Edom, which Esau and his posterity inhabited, was a very desert country, see Mal 1:3.
See the Bishop of Clogher's Chronology of the Hebrew Bible, p.