The ancient concept of a "blessing" is rather foreign to our modern ears. This was a sacred moment when the patriarch of a clan would take aside the next leader (i.e. the firstborn, like Esau) and pass on to him the family blessing. It was like a prayer and a consecration - putting that person in charge and commissioning him to lead and thrive by having the rest of the family serve him.
Perhaps because Esau had rather casually traded away his birthright (his family rights as the firstborn), it was only appropriate that now Jacob took away their father's blessing for the firstborn. Using subterfuge and disguise, Jacob appears before Isaac and pretends to be Esau. Isaac, thought skeptical at first, is eventually convinced and blesses his son.
Scarcely was the blessing passed on to Jacob when Esau enters, ready to receive this privilege. When it is discovered how Jacob has tricked him, we have a very poignant moment in scripture where Esau howls in misery, weeping at what was stolen from him. Esau is so upset at what Jacob has done that he begins plotting to kill him after Isaac's death. Alarmed, Rachel makes plans to send Jacob far away, back to her brother Laban in her homeland.
What would a modern-day parallel be? Perhaps imagine the reading of a will, where one son is given disproportionately more than his brother. But by stealing his sibling's identity, the other son is able to quickly lay claim to the property in question, enriching himself deceitfully at this brother's loss. This may come close to the trickery that we see in Genesis 27.
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