Two Family Lines and a Contested Birthright

The Hebrew is “Abraham added and took a wife”, which does not settle when; it could reach back into Sarah’s lifetime. 1 Chronicles 1:32 calls Keturah Abraham’s concubine. Her name sounds like qetoret, incense, a fitting name for the mother of peoples who traded in it.

Six sons, and two of the names travel far. Midian becomes the Midianites, among whom Moses marries and to whom Joseph is sold (37:28). Shuah is the ancestor of Bildad the Shuhite, one of Job’s friends (Job 2:11). Zimran, Medan and Ishbak are hardly heard of again.

Sheba and Dedan also appear in the table of nations, under Cush in 10:7, so the names may belong to trading peoples with more than one line of descent. Dedan was an oasis in north-west Arabia. Asshurim, Letushim and Leummim are plural forms, tribes rather than single men, and Asshurim is not Assyria.

Isaiah 60:6 pictures camels “of Midian and Ephah” coming from Sheba with gold and incense, which puts three of this chapter’s names on one caravan. Hanoch is the same name as Enoch in chapters 4 and 5. Counting sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, Keturah’s list holds sixteen names.

By firstborn right the inheritance would have gone to Ishmael, as Deuteronomy 21:15–17 later insists even when the firstborn’s mother is unloved. It goes instead to Isaac, the son of the free wife, as Sarah demanded in 21:10. The verse is the settlement that Abraham’s servant announced in 24:36.

The concubines are plural, most naturally Hagar and Keturah. “The east country” is qedem, and the “children of the east” reappear as raiders with the Midianites in Judges 6:3. Job, too, is called “the greatest of all the men of the east” (Job 1:3).

Abraham lived a hundred seventy-five years, Isaac a hundred eighty, Jacob a hundred forty-seven. Nahum Sarna observed that these are seven times five squared, five times six squared and three times seven squared, a patterned sequence; whether Genesis intends it is a scholar’s reading, but the arithmetic holds.

“Gave up the ghost” is gava, to expire; “ghost” in 1611 meant spirit or breath. “A good old age” fulfils exactly what God told Abraham in 15:15: “thou shalt be buried in a good old age.” Isaac is seventy-five and his twin sons fifteen.

Isaac is named first though Ishmael is fourteen years older, ordered by inheritance and not by birth. Rashi drew from the order that Ishmael gave Isaac precedence and had made his peace, an inference from word order. The last time they appeared together, in 21:9, one was mocking the other.

The purchase of chapter 23 is recalled in a clause, Ephron’s name and all. The only piece of Canaan Abraham ever owned was the grave, and the verse ends by putting him in it beside Sarah, the wife who had been waiting there for thirty-eight years.

This is the first time God is said to bless Isaac directly, and the blessing is recorded without words; chapter 26 will give them. Isaac settles at the well where Hagar was found by the angel, so the son of the promise lives beside the landmark of the other son’s mother.

“These are the generations” is the seventh toledot heading in Genesis, and it belongs to the son outside the covenant line. Hagar is given her full identification, Egyptian and Sarah’s handmaid, as when she first appeared in 16:1.

Nebajoth and Kedar are the best known: Isaiah 60:7 pairs “the flocks of Kedar” with “the rams of Nebaioth”, and “the tents of Kedar” in Song of Solomon 1:5 are black goat-hair tents. Esau marries Nebajoth’s sister in 28:9. Adbeel appears in the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III as an Arabian tribe.

Mishma and Mibsam, from the verse before, turn up again as Simeonite names in 1 Chronicles 4:25, side by side. Dumah is the oasis of Isaiah 21:11, “Watchman, what of the night?” Massa may be the kingdom of King Lemuel in Proverbs 31:1, where the Hebrew massa is usually rendered “prophecy”.

Hadar is Hadad in 1 Chronicles 1:30 and in many Hebrew manuscripts here. Tema is the oasis of Tayma, whose caravans are “the troops of Tema” in Job 6:19. Jetur gives its name to the Itureans, and Luke 3:1 makes Philip tetrarch of Ituraea. Kedemah means eastward.

“Towns” are chatserim, unwalled encampments, and “castles” are tirot, circles of tents such as nomads pitched. The words describe peoples on the move, not city dwellers. The word “princes” is nasi, the title the Hittites gave Abraham in 23:6.

Ishmael’s age is recorded like a patriarch’s, and a hundred thirty-seven is exactly the age later given for Levi (Exodus 6:16) and for Amram, the father of Moses (Exodus 6:20). He is “gathered unto his people” in the same words as his father.

Havilah to Shur is the same span over which Saul later strikes the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15:7. “He died” translates naphal, to fall or settle, and the phrase “in the presence of all his brethren” repeats 16:12, the angel’s word to Hagar before Ishmael was born, now fulfilled.

The heading is Isaac’s, the eighth toledot of Genesis, but almost everything under it concerns Jacob and Esau. It runs to Isaac’s death in 35:29. “Abraham begat Isaac” names the father again, so the new section starts from a solid line of descent.

Padan-aram, the plain of Aram, appears here for the first time; Jacob will spend twenty years there. “Syrian” means Aramean, and the confession Israel is told to recite in Deuteronomy 26:5 begins “A Syrian ready to perish was my father”, meaning Jacob, who married into this family.

“Intreated” is athar, to pray earnestly, and the second half uses the same verb in the passive, “was intreated”: the answer is described with the word for the asking. “For his wife” is literally “opposite his wife”, and the rabbis pictured the two of them praying facing each other.

“Struggled” is ratsats, to crush or smash, far stronger than kicking. Her question is broken off in the Hebrew: “If so, why this I?” How she went to enquire of the LORD, and where, the verse does not say; there was no sanctuary or prophet yet to go to.

The oracle is poetry, four lines in pairs. “The elder” is rav, an unusual word for the firstborn, and the line can be read the other way round, since Hebrew poetry sometimes leaves subject and object unmarked. Paul quotes it in Romans 9:12, and David’s garrisons in Edom (2 Samuel 8:14) are one fulfilment.

“Behold” marks the surprise: no one knew there were two until the birth. The Hebrew for “twins” is spelled here without one of its letters, while Tamar’s twins in 38:27 get the full spelling. Rashi read the shortened form as a hint that one of these two would turn out badly.

“Red” is admoni, and it will become Edom; the same word describes David in 1 Samuel 16:12. “Hairy” is sear, which sounds like Seir, the hill country where Esau settles. The name Esau itself is not explained, unlike almost every other name in these chapters.

Jacob’s name is built on aqev, heel, and Esau will turn it into a charge in 27:36: “he hath supplanted me these two times.” Hosea 12:3 reaches back to this verse: “He took his brother by the heel in the womb.” The father’s age closes the scene: Isaac waited twenty years.

“Plain” is tam, the word translated “perfect” of Job in Job 1:1, meaning whole or blameless, or here perhaps quiet and settled. Esau’s “field” is open country beyond the tents. The two brothers are described by where they spend the day.

“Because he did eat of his venison” is literally “for game was in his mouth”; “venison” in 1611 meant any hunted meat. Isaac’s love is given a reason and a past tense. Rebekah’s love for Jacob is a Hebrew participle, ongoing, “but Rebekah loves Jacob”, with no reason given.

“Sod” is the old past tense of seethe, to boil. “Faint” is ayef, worn out, the word for the weary exhausted pursuers of Gideon in Judges 8:4. The whole transaction turns on the difference between a man who cooks and a man who comes in empty.

“Feed me” is hallieteni, a rare verb meaning to gulp or be crammed with food, used in later Hebrew of feeding animals. Esau does not even name the dish: “the red, this red”. His name Edom, red, is fixed by a moment of appetite.

“This day” is kayyom, here meaning at once, before anything else. The birthright, bekhorah, carried a double share of the inheritance (Deuteronomy 21:17) and headship of the family. Jacob’s first recorded words are a price.

“At the point to die” is literally “going to die”. Esau may mean he is starving now, or that a hunter’s life is short and a future right worth nothing to him; the Hebrew allows both. Either way he talks himself out of it before Jacob has to.

“Swear to me this day” uses kayyom a second time: Jacob wants it binding now, not remembered later as a joke over dinner. The oath comes before the food, and the order matters for the sale to stand.

Only now does Genesis name the dish: lentils, adashim, a cheap staple, the crop in the field Shammah defends in 2 Samuel 23:11. Jacob adds bread to the bargain. “Despised” is bazah, the verb for Goliath disdaining the ruddy young David in 1 Samuel 17:42.