Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on 1 Chronicles 1:35
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
The posterity of Esau and Seir. - An extract from Gen 36:1-30. Ch1 1:35. The five sons of Esau are the same who, according to Gen 36:4., were born to him of his three wives in the land of Canaan. יעוּשׁ is another form of יעישׁ, Gen 36:5 (Kethibh). Ch1 1:36-37 The grandchildren of Esau. In Ch1 1:36 there are first enumerated five sons of his son Eliphaz, as in Gen 36:11, for צפי is only another form of צפו (Gen.). Next to these five names are ranged in addition ועמלק ותמנע, "Timna and Amalek," while we learn from Gen 36:12 that Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, who bore to him Amalek. The addition of the two names Timna and Amalek in the Chronicle thus appears to be merely an abbreviation, which the author might well allow himself, as the posterity of Esau were known to his readers from Genesis. The name Timna, too, by its form (a feminine formation), must have guarded against the idea of some modern exegetes that Timna was also a son of Eliphaz. Thus, then, Esau had through Eliphaz six grandchildren, who in Gen 36:12 are all set down as sons of Adah, the wife of Esau and the mother of Eliphaz. (Vide com. to Gen 36:12, where the change of Timna into a son of Eliphaz is rejected as a misinterpretation.) Ch1 1:37 To Reuel, the son of Esau by Bashemath, four sons were born, whose names correspond to those in Gen 36:13. These ten (6 + 4) grandsons of Esau were, with his three sons by Aholibamah (Jeush, Jaalam, and Korah, Gen 36:35), the founders of the thirteen tribes of the posterity of Esau. They are called in Gen 36:15 עשׂו בּני אלּוּפי, heads of tribes (φύλαρχοι) of the children of Esau, i.e., of the Edomites, but are all again enumerated, Gen. 3615-19, singly. (Note: The erroneous statement of Bertheau, therefore, that "according to Genesis the Edomite people was also divided into twelve tribes, five tribes from Eliphaz, four tribes from Reuel, and the three tribes which were referred immediately to Aholibamah the wife of Esau. It is distinctly stated that Amalek was connected with these twelve tribes only very loosely, for he appears as the son of the concubine of Eliphaz," - must be in so far corrected, that neither the Chronicle nor Genesis knows anything of the twelve tribes of the Edomites. Both books, on the contrary, mention thirteen grandsons of Esau, and these thirteen grandsons are, according to the account of Genesis, the thirteen phylarchs of the Edomite people, who are distributed according to the three wives of Esau; so that the thirteen families may be grouped together in three tribes. Nor is Amalek connected only in a loose way with the other tribes in Genesis: he is, on the contrary, not only included in the number of the sons of Adah in Gen 36:12, probably because Timna stood in the same relationship to Adah the wife of Esau as Hagar held to Sarah, but also is reckoned in Gen 36:16 among the Allufim of the sons of Eliphaz. Genesis therefore enumerates not five but six tribes from Eliphaz; and the chronicler has not "completely obliterated the twelvefold division," as Bertheau further maintains, but the thirteen sons and grandsons of Esau who became phylarchs are all introduced; and the only thing which is omitted in reference to them is the title עשׂו בּני אלּוּפי, it being unnecessary in a genealogical enumeration of the descendants of Esau.) Ch1 1:38-42 When Esau with his descendants had settled in Mount Seir, they subdued by degrees the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, and became fused with them into one peo…
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