Genesis 36:43

The dukes were the chiefs of Edom’s clans, each the head of a family group and the district it lived in. “Duke” is the KJV’s word for the Hebrew ʼallûwph, a chief or leader, and here it carries none of the rank of a European nobleman. The word is related to the idea of being familiar or tame. Elsewhere it can mean a friend or companion, or tame cattle such as an ox, and as a title it means a chief. Strong’s explains the title as belonging to one who is notable among his people. Some connect it with the Hebrew word for a thousand, used of a large family or clan, so that a duke would be the head of such a clan.

In the Old Testament this title belongs mostly to the chiefs of Edom. Israel’s tribal leaders are more often called by another word, nasi, usually translated “prince”, so the title itself marks these men as Edom’s own kind of leader. Genesis 36 has already named the chiefs who came from Esau’s sons and grandsons (Genesis 36:9–19), the chiefs of the Horites who lived in Seir before Edom (Genesis 36:20–30), and the kings of Edom (Genesis 36:31–39). This list of eleven dukes completes the record.

Verse 40 tells us how the list is arranged: “according to their families, after their places, by their names.” A family, mishpâchâh, is a circle of relatives, a clan, and by extension a class or kind of people who share something in common. A place, mâqôwm, is properly a standing or a spot, and the word is used widely of any locality. A name, shêm, is what marks out a person, and by implication it stands for his honour, authority and character. So each chief is known by his kin, his land and his name, and his authority rests on the clan he heads and the district it holds.

The last verse closes the list in the same way: “according to their habitations in the land of their possession.” Habitations, môwshâb, are seats or sites, places to live. A possession, ʼăchuzzâh, is literally something seized, and the word means property or a holding, especially of land. Edom is now a settled people, each clan in its own district, in a land it holds as its own.

Because the dukes are named “after their places”, many of these names may stand for clans or regions as well as for single men. Some of them match names found earlier in the chapter, and a chief could bear the name of the forefather of his clan or of the place where it lived.

Just before this list Genesis names “the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel” (Genesis 36:31–39). So Edom had both kings and dukes, and the chapter leaves open how the two fit together in time. The dukes may be an older tribal order, with power shared among many clan heads, that gave way to a single king. They may also be chiefs who ruled their districts alongside the kings, so that Edom had a king over the nation and local heads over its clans at the same time. On either reading Edom had a settled order of leaders before Israel asked for a king of its own (1 Samuel 8), and the dukes are the last word Genesis gives on how Edom was governed.

The list ends with a line that sums up the whole chapter: “he is Esau the father of the Edomites.” ʼâb is the ordinary word for father, used of a man’s own father and also, as here, of the forefather of a whole people. Every clan, chief and district in this list goes back to one man, Jacob’s twin brother. Esau was also called Edom, ʼĔdôm, a name meaning “red” (Genesis 25:30). The chapter opens with “the generations of Esau, who is Edom” and tells how he took his family away to Mount Seir (Genesis 36:1–8), and its last verse brings us back to him.

Seir, “the country of Edom” (Genesis 32:3), is a rugged, mountainous land south and east of the Dead Sea, east of the Arabah valley, in what is now southern Jordan. It lay across important trade routes. This is “the land of their possession.”

This careful record also sets the scene for the long history between the two brothers’ peoples, a history of kinship and conflict. When Israel came out of Egypt and asked to pass through Edom’s land, Edom refused (Numbers 20:14–21). Centuries later the LORD spoke through Malachi of his love for Jacob and his hatred of Esau (Malachi 1:2–3), setting the two lines side by side once more. Genesis 36 is where we first meet Edom as a nation in its own right, with a name, rulers and land, and the later chapters build on it.

People ask why the Bible spends all of Genesis 36 on Esau when its story follows Jacob. The chapter shows God ruling over all nations as well as over the covenant line. He divided the nations of the earth after the flood (Genesis 10:32), and he goes on ruling them: “The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:10–11). Before him “the nations are as a drop of a bucket” (Isaiah 40:15), and Paul told the Athenians that God has determined “the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” for every nation (Acts 17:26). The habitations of Edom’s dukes lie within bounds that God set.

The record also keeps two lines of descent distinct. God’s promises to Abraham (Genesis 12:1) were to be carried on through Isaac and Jacob, and the genealogies of Jesus trace his descent through that line (Matthew 1:1–17, Luke 3:23–38). By setting down Esau’s line in full and closing it here, Genesis makes plain which family the story follows next, the family through which the Messiah would come.

The one line through which the Messiah came was chosen for the sake of all the others. Paul says that the gospel was preached to Abraham in the promise that all nations would be blessed in him (Galatians 3:8), and he names Christ as Abraham’s Seed (Galatians 3:16). In Christ God breaks down the wall between Israel and the nations and makes the two one new people (Ephesians 2:11–22), and John sees a great multitude from all nations before God (Revelation 7:9). The dukes of Edom ruled their clans and districts, and Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords over every people (Revelation 19:16). God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16), and he is gathering a people for himself from every tribe and nation.

These four verses give us eleven names, Timnah and Pinon and Mibzar and the rest, and God saw fit to keep them in his word. He knew each clan, its chief and its land. He kept his word to Rebekah about the son who was not chosen as well as the son who was, and he gave Esau a home. The God who set the bounds of Edom’s habitations is the same God who rules the nations now and gathers his people from every one of them in Christ. A page of names in Genesis belongs to that story, and it shows us who God is: faithful to what he says, attentive to the smallest details of history, and Lord over every people on earth.