Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 36-38.

Ordinarily, my eyes glaze over when I read genealogies such as those in this passage.  However, today as I read over them some things caught my eye.  I am not sure that any of these things will change my understanding of Scripture, but they do reveal some aspects of biblical history which I never thought about before and make me wonder about what those who composed this passage knew that we no longer have any record of.  First, I noticed that Amalek was the son of Esau by his concubine, Timna.  Amalek was the forefather of the Amalekites, whom the Israelites fought later (this is interesting because before today, I thought all of Esau’s descendants were Edomites, members of the nation of Edom).  A little later in these genealogies we learn that Timna was the sister of one of the Horite chieftains who lived in the area where Esau settled.  Which led me to do a little searching to discover who the Horites were.  I found that the Hebrew word translated as “Horite” means “cave dweller”.  I also found that some translators think that Horite was not meant to indicate a nation of people, but merely that these people lived in caves.  To me the passage seems to say that Esau and his descendants became integrated with those who had been living in this region in much the same way that Shechem had tried to make happen with Jacob’s family after he had raped Jacob’s daughter (although Esau’s descendants came to rule this area, which was not what Shechem had in mind).  The other thing of interest I found in these genealogies was that the first listed king of Edom was the “son of Beor”, which makes me wonder if this Beor is the same Beor who was the father of Balaam who was called on to curse the Children of Israel in the Book of Exodus.  If so, this would lead me to interesting thoughts about the worship of God among the Edomites.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.