Let me eat some of that red pottage is literally “Let me swallow….” The narrator is depicting Esau as a greedy glutton. New Jerusalem Bible expresses the thought well with “Let me gulp down.” In some translations the feeling is expressed by “Give me that red soup of yours. Hurry!” Red pottage is literally “this red, red” (Hebrew ʾedom, a word that sounds like “Edom”).

For I am famished: Esau repeats what the narrator has said about him in verse 29. In some languages it is more natural to make this the first statement of Esau’s speech: “I’m so hungry! Give me some of that red soup.”

(Therefore his name was called Edom): Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation enclose this information between parentheses and add a footnote explaining that “Edom,” the country of the Edomites, sounds like the Hebrew word for “red.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .