Did Moses write the Edomite kings list in Genesis 36?

Old Testament / History

In the 11^th century CE, Isaac ibn Yashush, a Jewish court physician of a ruler in Muslim Spain, pointed out that a list of Edomite kings that appears in Genesis 36 named kings who lived after Moses. This was quite an interesting observation, mainly because it challenges the traditional idea of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.

Note - This and all excerpts are taken from the 1917 JPS translation of the Hebrew Tanakh: Genesis 36.

36:31 And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.
36:32 And Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom; and the name of his city was Dinhabah.
36:33 And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah reigned in his stead.
36:34 And Jobab died, and Husham of the land of the Temanites reigned in his stead.
36:35 And Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who smote Midian in the field of Moab, reigned in his stead; and the name of his city was Avith.
36:36 And Hadad died, and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead.
36:37 And Samlah died, and Shaul of Rehoboth by the River reigned in his stead.
36:38 And Shaul died, and Baal-hanan the son of Achbor reigned in his stead.
36:39 And Baal-hanan the son of Achbor died, and Hadar reigned in his stead; and the name of his city was Pau; and his wife's name was Mehetabel, the daughter of Matred, the daughter of Me-zahab.
36:40 And these are the names of the chiefs that came of Esau, according to their families, after their places, by their names: the chief of Timna, the chief of Alvah, the chief of Jetheth;
36:41 the chief of Oholibamah, the chief of Elah, the chief of Pinon;
36:42 the chief of Kenaz, the chief of Teman, the chief of Mibzar;
36:43 the chief of Magdiel, the chief of Iram. These are the chiefs of Edom, according to their habitations in the land of their possession. This is Esau the father of the Edomites.

I wish to focus on an overlooked detail, specifically verse of Genesis 36:39. We read of a King Hadar. It is also very possible that we are observing another instance of scribal error (read below). Now before I continue, I wish to note that Hadar is an alternate form to Hadad, a very common Canaanite deity. For instance, in Late Bronze Age Ugaritic mythology, Baal Haddad was the fertility god of the Ugarits. Influence of his cult spread throughout the Near East. It was very common to see theophoric names incorporating this deity; many of which can be found in the Bible. We can view this alternate form for the same individual written in 1Chronicles 1:

1:50 And Baal-hanan died, and Hadad reigned in his stead; and the name of his city was Pai; and his wife's name was Mehetabel, the daughter of Matred, the daughter of Mezahab.
1:51 And Hadad died.

Aside from Hadar’s name, also notice the name of the city is now spelled and pronounced Pai and not Pau, as seen in Genesis. [1] Before I start commenting on this verse, I wish to move ahead a bit to 1Kings 11:

11:14 And YHWH raised up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite; he was of the king's seed in Edom.
11:15 For it came to pass, when David was in Edom, and Joab the captain of the host was gone up to bury the slain, and had smitten every male in Edom--
11:16 for Joab and all Israel remained there six months, until he had cut off every male in Edom--
11:17 that Hadad fled, he and certain Edomites of his father's servants with him, to go into Egypt; Hadad being yet a little child.
11:18 And they arose out of Midian, and came to Paran; and they took men with them out of Paran, and they came to Egypt, unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, who gave him a house, and appointed him victuals, and gave him land.
11:19 And Hadad found great favour in the sight of Pharaoh, so that he gave him to wife the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tahpenes the queen.
11:20 And the sister of Tahpenes bore him Genubath his son, whom Tahpenes weaned in Pharaoh's house; and Genubath was in Pharaoh's house among the sons of Pharaoh.
11:21 And when Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his fathers, and that Joab the captain of the host was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh: 'Let me depart, that I may go to mine own country.'
11:22 Then Pharaoh said unto him: 'But what hast thou lacked with me, that, behold, thou seekest to go to thine own country?' And he answered: 'Nothing; howbeit let me depart in any wise.'
11:23 And God raised up another adversary unto him, Rezon the son of Eliada, who had fled from his lord Hadadezer king of Zobah.
11:24 And he gathered men unto him, and became captain over a troop, when David slew them [of Zobah]; and they went to Damascus, and dwelt therein, and reigned in Damascus.
11:25 And he was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon, beside the mischief that Hadad did; and he abhorred Israel, and reigned over Aram.

We read of a story in which a later-to-become king named Hadad and his family fled to Egypt to seek refuge against David and his army. It was in Egypt that Hadad won favor in the Pharaoh’s eyes and was given a daughter to marry. Eventually Hadad found a reason to head back to his homeland, where he could resume rule. The reason I point this out is the fact that an Edomite king named Hadad who went to Egypt and married an Egyptian can bring some vital clues as to the dating of the Edomite list of kings found in Genesis.

Going back to Genesis 36:39, it has been suggested that the name of the wife of Hadad and her mother may indicate some origins within Egypt. Unfortunately, I am unable to locate a reliable resource proving such a statement. It has also been suggested that the city Pau/ Pai to which Hadar/ Hadad ruled from is the Egyptian city of Pe, a suburb of Buto in Lower Egypt; a “royal residence of early Egyptian kings.” [2] If the Hadad in 1Kings 11 and the Hadar/ Hadad in Genesis 36:39 are one and the same, it would be safe to say that at a minimum, this chapter of Genesis was written deep into the Iron Age of the Levant, sometime after the during or after the 10th century BCE.

The story given to us in 1Kings 11 speaks of a child and his family fleeing to Egypt, where that child grew and after turning into an adult, gets married and hearing of David’s and Joab’s death, finally came back to rule Edom. Remember, Genesis 36:31 clearly states ‘these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.’ If the author wrote this chapter immediately after the split of both kingdoms, then he would have known that Hadar and at least a few rulers prior to him would have ruled during the time when kings reigned over Israel and Judah.

The Archaeological Record

For many years, archaeologists in the Levant maintained that there was no evidence ever indicating that Edom was an organized state or society prior to the 9^th and 8^th centuries BCE. Recent excavations at Khirbet an-Nahas in Jordan tell a different story. Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts and evidence of a settled state society no earlier than the 10^th century BCE. The evidence led experts to conclude that the site was involved in large copper production.

Featured image: An Edomite shrine in Metsad Hazeva (Biblical Tamar) ca. 7th-6th BCE. (Chamberi / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Notes

[1] A plausible explanation for the differences in the name of Hadar (rdh)/ Hadad (ddh) can be the transition of proto-Hebrew into the square script, whereas in proto-Hebrew the Hebrew d (dālet) and r (rêš) show striking similarities, as they do in the square script. Chances are that the differences could have been a scribal error, although this does not explain the differences between Pau and Pai.

[2] This identification for the city of Pau/ Pai has been suggested by David J. Gibson.