For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. He could find no ground for repentance, though he sought the blessing with tears.
17. When he would have inherited the blessing, etc. He at first regarded as a sport the act by which he had sold his birthright, as though it was a child’s play; but at length, when too late, he found what a loss he had incurred, when the blessing transferred by his father to Jacob was refused to him.
Verse 17. For ye know how that afterward, etc. When he came to his father, and earnestly besought him to reverse the sentence which he had pronounced. See . The "blessing" here referred to was not that of the birthright, which he knew he could not regain, but that pronounced by the father Isaac on him whom he regarded as his first born son.
afterwards--Greek, "even afterward." He despised his birthright, accordingly also he was despised and rejected when he wished to have the blessing. As in the believer's case, so in the unbeliever's, there is an "afterwards" coming, when the believer shall look on his past griefs, and the unbeliever on his past joys, in a very different light from that in which they were respectively viewed at the time.