Biblion Bible Commentary
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The generations of Esau
Genesis 36:1-43
1 Now this is the history of the generations of Esau (that is, Edom). · WEB
The brother who was not chosen gets a chapter of chiefs and kings, and the narrative clears his line before following the other one.
Now this is the history of the generations of Esau (that is, Edom). The formula opens the book's eighth section, and it is the last one before the narrative settles on Jacob's family for fourteen chapters.
The pattern is by now familiar. Genesis regularly gives the non-covenant branch a full accounting and then sets it aside: Cain's line before Seth's, the table of nations before Shem's genealogy, Ishmael's twelve princes before Isaac's history. Each time the rejected line is treated with care rather than dismissed, and each time the point is the same — God's promises to those outside the chosen line are recorded as kept.
And what Esau receives is considerable. Chiefs by name and by district, a settled territory in the hill country of Edom , and kings. He is prosperous, established, and organized generations before Jacob's descendants are anything but a family in Egypt.
The separation is described in words that deliberately echo an earlier one: their substance was too great for them to dwell together, and the land of their travels couldn't bear them because of their livestock. That is almost exactly what happened between Abram and Lot Genesis 13:6 — and the difference is the whole point. That separation was preceded by strife between herdsmen and settled by one man surrendering his rights. This one simply happens: Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters... and went into a land away from his brother Jacob. No quarrel, no arbitration, no bitterness recorded. The brother who once swore to kill Jacob moves out of his way.
One verse in the chapter has attracted more attention than the rest of it together: These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the children of Israel.
It is often read as proof that the sentence must have been written after Israel had kings, and therefore centuries after Moses. The inference is not as tight as it looks. The promise of kings had been given twice already in this book, to Abraham — kings will come out of you Genesis 17:6 — and to Jacob at Bethel a chapter earlier, kings will come out of your body Genesis 35:11. A writer who knew those promises could note that Edom had reached monarchy first while Israel's kings were still ahead, and the comparison is exactly the kind a contemporary would find worth making about a neighbor who had arrived before them.
What the chapter accomplishes is a clearing of the stage, and it is worth noticing how generous the clearing is. The man who sold his birthright for a bowl of stew, married badly, and lost the blessing gets his own section of the book with his descendants named one by one. He is not the line of promise and he is not written off, and the last words about him are This is Esau, the father of the Edomites.
The next verse begins the history of the generations of Jacob, and the first name in it is Joseph.
settled What this mark means