1And this is the lineage of Esau, that is, Edom. 2Esau took his wives from the daughters of Canaan—Adah daughter of Elon the Hittite and Oholibamah daughter of Anah son of Zibeon the Hivvite, 3and Basemath daughter of Ishmael, sister of Nebaioth. 4And Adah bore to Esau Eliphaz while Basemath bore Reuel, 5and Oholibamah bore Jeush and Jalam and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan. 6And Esau took his wives and his sons and his daughters and all the folk of his household and his livestock and all his cattle and all the goods he had gotten in the land of Canaan and he went to another land away from Jacob his brother. 7For their substance was too great for dwelling together and the land of their sojournings could not support them because of their livestock. 8And Esau settled in the high country of Seir—Esau, that is, Edom.
9And this is the lineage of Esau, father of Edom, in the high country of Seir. 10These are the names of the sons of Esau: Eliphaz son of Adah, Esau’s wife, Reuel son of Basemath, Esau’s wife. 11And the sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, and Gatam and Kenaz. 12And Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz son of Esau, and she bore to Eliphaz Amalek. These are the sons of Adah, Esau’s wife. 13And these are the sons of Reuel: Nahath and Zerah, Shammah and Mizzah. These were the sons of Basemath, Esau’s wife. 14And these were the sons of Esau’s wife Oholibamah, daughter of Anah son of Zibeon—she bore to Esau Jeush and Jalam and Korah.
15These are the chieftains of the sons of Esau. The sons of Eliphaz, firstborn of Esau: the chieftain Teman, the chieftain Omar, the chieftain Zepho, the chieftain Kenaz, 16the chieftain Korah, the chieftain Gatam, the chieftain Amalek. These are the chieftains of Eliphaz in the land of Edom, these are the sons of Adah. 17And these are the sons of Reuel son of Esau: the chieftain Nahath, the chieftain Zerah, the chieftain Shammah, the chieftain Mizzah. These are the chieftains of Reuel in the land of Edom, these are the sons of Basemath, Esau’s wife. 18And these are the sons of Oholibamah, Esau’s wife: the chieftain Jeush, the chieftain Jalam, the chieftain Korah. These are the chieftains of Oholibamah daughter of Anah, Esau’s wife. 19These are the sons of Esau, that is, Edom, and these their chieftains.
20These are the sons of Seir the Horite who had settled in the land: Lotan and Shobal and Zibeon and Anah, 21and Dishon and Ezer and Dishan. These are the Horite chieftains, sons of Seir, in the land of Edom. 22And the sons of Lotan were Hori and Hemam, and Lotan’s sister was Timna. 23And these are the sons of Shobal: Alvan and Manahoth and Ebal, Shepho and Onam. 24And these are the sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah, he is Anah who found the water in the wilderness when he took the asses of his father Zibeon to graze. 25And these are the children of Anah: Dishon and Oholibamah daughter of Anah. 26And these are the sons of Dishon: Hemdan and Eshban and Ithran and Cheran. 27These are the sons of Ezer: Bilhan and Zaavan and Akan. 28These are the sons of Dishan: Uz and Aran. 29These are the Horite chieftains: the chieftain Lotan, the chieftain Shobal, the chieftain Zibeon, the chieftain Anah, 30the chieftain Dishon, the chieftain Ezer, the chieftain Dishan. These are the Horite chieftains by their clans in the land of Seir.
31These are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the Israelites. 32And Bela son of Beor reigned in Edom and the name of his city was Dinhabah. 33And Bela died and Jobab son of Zerah from Bozrah, reigned in his stead. 34And Jobab died, and Husham from the land of the Temanite reigned in his stead. 35And Husham died and Hadad son of Bedad reigned in his stead, he who struck down Midian on the steppe of Moab, and the name of his city was Avith. 36And Hadad died and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead. 37And Samlah died and Saul from Rehobothon-the-River reigned in his stead. 38And Saul died and Baal-Hanan son of Achbor reigned in his stead. 39And Baal-Hanan son of Achbor died and Hadad reigned in his stead, and the name of his city was Pau and the name of his wife was Mehetabel daughter of Matred daughter of Me-Zahab.
40And these are the names of the chieftains of Esau by their clans and places name by name: the chieftain of Timna, the chieftain Alvah, the chieftain Jetheth, 41the chieftain of Oholibamah, the chieftain Elah, the chieftain Pinon, 42the chieftain Kenaz, the chieftain Teman, the chieftain Mibzar, 43the chieftain Magdiel, the chieftain Iram. These are the chieftains of Edom by their settlements in the land of their holdings—that is, Esau, father of Edom.
CHAPTER 36 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
Chapter 36 offers the last of the major genealogies in Genesis. These lists of generations (toledot) and of kings obviously exerted an intrinsic fascination for the ancient audience and served as a way of accounting for historical and political configurations, which were conceived through a metaphor of biological propagation. (In fact, virtually the only evidence we have about the Edomite settlement is the material in this chapter.) As a unit in the literary structure of Genesis, the genealogies here are the marker of the end of a long narrative unit. What follows is the story of Joseph, a continuous sequence that is the last large literary unit of Genesis. The role of Esau’s genealogy is clearly analogous to that of Ishmael’s genealogy in chapter 25: before the narrative goes on to pursue the national line of Israel, an account is rendered of the posterity of the patriarch’s son who is not the bearer of the covenantal promise. But Isaac had given Esau, too, a blessing, however qualified, and these lists demonstrate the implementation of that blessing in Esau’s posterity.
The chapter also serves to shore up the narrative geographically, to the east, before turning its attention to the south. Apart from the brief report in chapter 12 of Abraham’s sojourn in Egypt, which is meant to foreshadow the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, the significant movement beyond the borders of Canaan has all been eastward, across the Jordan to Mesopotamia and back again. Esau now makes his permanent move from Canaan to Edom—the mountainous region east of Canaan, south of the Dead Sea and stretching down toward the Gulf of Aqabah. Once this report is finished, our attention will be turned first to Canaan and then to Egypt.
1–8. This is the first of the six different lists—perhaps drawn from different archival sources by the editor—that make up the chapter. Although it does record Esau’s sons, the stress is on his wives. There are both overlap and inconsistency among the different lists. These need not detain us here. The best account of these sundry traditions, complete with charts, is the discussion of this chapter in the Hebrew Encyclopedia ʿOlam haTanakh, though Nahum Sarna provides a briefer but helpful exposition of the lists in his commentary.
2. Anah son of Zibeon. The Masoretic Text has “daughter of,” but Anah is clearly a man (cf. verse 24), and several ancient versions read “son.”
6. another land. The translation follows the explanatory gloss of the ancient Targums. The received text has only “a land.”
away from. Or, “because of.”
7. the land . . . could not support them. The language of the entire passage is reminiscent of the separation between Lot and Abraham in chapter 13. It is noteworthy that Esau, in keeping with his loss of birthright and blessing, concedes Canaan to his brother and moves his people to the southeast.
9–14. The second unit is a genealogical list focusing on sons rather than wives.
12. Timna . . . a concubine . . . bore . . . Amalek. If Amalek is subtracted, we have a list of twelve tribes, as with Israel and Ishmael. Perhaps the birth by a concubine is meant to set Amalek apart, in a status of lesser legitimacy. Amalek becomes the hereditary enemy of Israel, whereas the other Edomites had normal dealings with their neighbors to the west.
15–19. The third unit is a list of chieftains descended from Esau.
15. chieftains. It has been proposed that the Hebrew ʾaluf means “clan,” but that seems questionable because most of the occurrences of the term elsewhere in the Bible clearly indicate a person, not a group. The difficulty is obviated if we assume that an ’aluf is the head of an ʾelef, a clan. The one problem with this construction, the fact that in verses 40 and 41 ʾaluf is joined with a feminine proper noun, may be resolved by seeing a construct form there (“chieftain of Timna” instead of “chieftain Timna”).
20–30. The fourth unit of the chapter is a list of Horite inhabitants of Edom. The Horites—evidently the term was used interchangeably with Hittite—were most probably the Hurrians, a people who penetrated into this area from Armenia sometime in the first half of the second millennium B.C.E. They seem to have largely assimilated into the local population, a process reflected in the fact that, like everyone else in these lists, they have West Semitic names.
20. who had settled in the land. “Settlers [or inhabitants] of the land” is closer to the Hebrew. That is, the “Horites” were the indigenous population by the time the Edomites invaded from the west, during the thirteenth century B.C.E.
24. Aiah. The Masoretic Text reads “and Aiah.”
who found the water in the wilderness. The object of the verb in the Hebrew, yemim, is an anomalous term, and venerable traditions that render it as “mules” or “hot springs” have no philological basis. This translation follows E. A. Speiser’s plausible suggestion that a simple transposition of the first and second consonants of the word has occurred and that the original reading was mayim, “water.” Discovery of any water source in the wilderness would be enough to make it noteworthy for posterity.
26. Dishon. The Masoretic Text reads “Dishan,” who is his brother, and whose offspring are recorded two verses later. There is support for “Dishon” in some of the ancient versions.
30. by their clans. The translation revocalizes the Masoretic ʾalufeyhem as ʾalfeyhem (the consonants remain identical) to yield “clans.”
31–39. The fifth unit of the chapter is a list of the kings of Edom. They do not constitute a dynasty because none of the successors to the throne is a son of his predecessor.
31. before any king reigned over the Israelites. The phrase refers to the establishment of the monarchy beginning with Saul and not, as some have proposed, to the imposition of Israelite suzerainty over Edom by David, because of the particle le (“to,” “for,” “over”), rather than mi (“from”) prefixed to the Hebrew for “Israelites.” This is one of those brief moments when the later perspective in time of the writer pushes to the surface in the Patriarchal narrative.
37. Rehoboth-on-the-River. Rehoboth means “broad places”: in urban contexts, in the singular, it designates the city square; here it might mean something like “meadows.” Rehobothon-the-River is probably meant to distinguish this place from some other Rehoboth, differently situated.
39. Hadad. The Masoretic Text has “Hadar,” but this is almost certainly a mistake for the well-attested name Hadad, as Chronicles, and some ancient versions and manuscripts, read. In Hebrew, there is only a small difference between the graphemes for r and for d.
40–43. The sixth and concluding list of the collection is another record of the chieftains descended from Esau. Most of the names are different, and the list may reflect a collation of archival materials stemming from disparate sources. This sort of stitching together of different testimonies would be in keeping with ancient editorial practices.