Esav (Esau)

עשו


Mispronounced Esau in English. The name David (דוד) was probably pronounced Daoud, and Esau would follow the same phonetic rule, softening the Vav.

However, having said that, the standard phonetic spelling actually is correct, provided that we then pronounce it "E-" (as in "egg", not E as in "Easter") followed by "-sow" (as in "female pig").

The letter Vav is much disputed among scholars of Yehudit, mostly because there is nowhere to place a dagesh to indicate a hard or soft form; and David is still rendered as Daoud in contemporary Arabic.

I have made the decision to use the "hard V" version of Esav in these pages, confident that it is 50-50 correct-incorrect, certain that I do want to avoid the error of Esau that would inevitably arise if I used correct phonetics rather than incorrect ones for what would then have to be "E-sow".

His story is told from Genesis 25:21 until Genesis 36. Twin brother of Ya'akov (Jacob), he is also named Edom, usually in the context of his posterity (Genesis 36:1-43). Kayin's (Cain's) wanderings in the land of Nod ended with his daughters marrying the sons of Yishma-El, though the chronology of this has never been explained; Yishma-El's own wanderings ended with his settling in Se'ir. Thus Kayin (the Kenites), Yishma-El, Esav, Edom and Se'ir become effectively the same tribe, inhabiting Mount Se'ir and its environs to the south-east of the Dead Sea.

The Edomites' eponymous ancestor was Adam. Though he is named as a member of the Beney Yehudah, some scholars reckon that Yehoshua's Tanist "twin" Kalev (Caleb) was an Edomite, by descent through the Kenizites, and many of the tales told in the Tanach - all of the twin-brother tales without exception - are of Edomite origin, to the extent that we can treat Beney Yisra-El and Beney Edom as twin-tribes, and reflect upon a two thousand year rivalry described in the Tanach, all the way from Adam and Chavah (Eve) to the prediction that the Messiah will come from Batsrah (Bozrah), the capital city of Roman Idumaea.

The name is taken to mean "hairy" or "rough" (Genesis 25:25) from the root Asah (עשה) = "to be covered with hair". However, no known grammatical development leads from that to the word Esav, and (see my notes to Genesis 25 where I discuss this in much more detail) it is much more likely to have been a Yehudit rendering of a name from a different language, the obvious candidate being the Hunter-God Usöus of Usu (Tsur/Tyre). His kingdom too included Mount Se'ir and much of his tale parallels that of Esav.

The other reason why ESAV is taken to mean "hairy" or "rough" may be his identification with SE'IR, which does indeed mean something like that; "shaggy" comes the closest, though in the sense of a hill "covered with wild trees" rather than a head "covered with wild hair! But the stories told of him pick up the shagginess, and make it his physical being. He too was red-haired, because Edom (אדם) is connected to Adom (אדום) which means "red", and because of the blood-red colour of its soil (ADAMAH - אדמה), all of which explain why the original Human was named Adam.

And indeed, the normal Yehudit word for "hairy" is Se'ir (שעיר), which just happens to be the name of this land to which Esav decamped after burying his father Yitschak and separating finally with Ya'akov. It is possible then that the two were simply dialect variations of the same name (as the French say Dieu but the Germans Gott for the same deity). Se'ir the Chorite was the founding father of the inhabitants of Mount Se'ir; we can therefore read Se'ir as the original Kena'ani Dionysus or goat-god, with his shrine on the mountain of that name. Se'ir in that context makes for a neat pun, for the root Sa'ar (שער), which is not otherwise connected to the root for "hairy", means "to shake violently", and Mount Se'ir is indeed an extinct volcano.

But the hairiness - which Ya'akov impersonates in order to "steal" his brother's birthright (steal in quotation marks because, given the prevailing law of ultimogeniture, the birthright was never actually Esav's in the first place; unless we read this story as the aetiological fable created to explain and validate ultimogeniture) - is in fact of a much deeper mythological type. Ya'akov is the YIsra-Eli equivalent of Pan, the goat-god or satyr. Genesis 37:31 and Leviticus 16:5 give the fuller version of Se'ir as Se'ir Izim (שעיר עזים); Leviticus 4:24 and 16:9 explain the sacrifice of the kid-goat which has taken place symbolically in Genesis 37:31, and which rite is being misremembered in a thoroughly bowdlerised version in Genesis 27. The Se'irim Izim were wood demons or satyrs, who normally inhabited the foothills of mountains, though Isaiah 13:21 and 34:14 finds them inhabiting desert regions as well.

Deuteronomy 2:4 gives Beney Esav as the tribe, presumably a synonym for Beney Edom.

It is from this understanding of the Esav myths that we are better able to understand who Ya'akov was. The role of goat-god in the Greek myths belonged to Dionysus, and as with Yoseph's slightly awkward and somewhat tenuous link to the Jacobite family (his mother the only matriarch not buried at Machpelah, himself the only "son" of Ya'akov with no tribal inheritance) parallels the amalgamation into goat-Dionysus of the Bacchanalian cults: the bread and wine rites which Christianity retains in the Eucharist and Communion. The "twinning" is simply a reflection of the Tanist rituals which divide the year in two domains, the manner by which the sun-cult parallels the moon cult's waxing and waning moon.

Genesis 25:23 states categorically that two very different nations - Esav and Ya'akov, or Edom and Yisra-El, as you prefer - will be born from Rivkah's (Rebecca's) womb. When Esav emerged he was "red" (Admoni - אדמוני) and "hairy" (ke-aderet sa'ar - כאדרת שער) = "like a garment made of goat's hair". The names of Edom and Se'ir are both contained. Emerging from the womb, Ya'akov seizes his brother's heel - the heel of the goat-god was sacred, as we know from Achilles as well as from tales of Dionysus and Oedipus ("swollen-foot"), and Ya'akov (יעקב) almost certainly comes from Yah Ekev (יה עקב), i.e. "the god of the sacred heel". Genesis 25:30 states that the potage that Ya'akov made for Esav in exchange for his birthright was red (ha-Adom ha-Adom), "whence was his name called Edom".

In Genesis 26:34: Esav at the age of forty takes wives. The first was Yehudit (Judith - יהודית) the daughter of Beri (בארי) of the Beney Chet; the second Basmat (בשמת) daughter of Elon (אילון) of the Beney Chet. Note that they are both Hittites and that "his parents were displeased" by this. In fact, only Rivkah appears really to have been displeased - Yitschak still intends to bless Esav at his death; it is Rivkah who instructs Ya'akov to steal the blessing (Genesis 27:46) - a fact we may attribute to her Aramaean origins.

Yehudit (Judith): This reference is particularly fascinating. Yehudit is supposed to mean Jewess - or, in the Biblical, "a woman of the tribe of Yehudah (Judah)". Yet two whole generations before the birth of Yehudah, there is already a female of that name. In fact the root word is Yahad (יהד) = "to praise", and its most common occurrence in the Tanach is in the Hallel section of the Psalms (113-118), all of which are dedicated to Yah - and called Hallel, which means "praise", because they begin or end Hallelu-Yah (הללויה): "let us sing praise to Yah". Thus Yehudit can be read as a very specific role in the priestesshood of the mother-goddess: that which today we would call chazan or cantor, though in this case a chazanit. From this we can deduce who the original tribe of Yehudah must have been: as with most of the other tribes, not ethnic at all, but in some manner cultic, and each with both a masculine and a feminine (Dan-Dinah, Asher-Asherah etc). The tribe of Yehudah may have been the original temple choir, the role taken on by the Beney Korach after the exile.

Beri (בארי): Either from the root word meaning "a well", or possibly - if we exclude the Aleph (א) - that meaning "to be fat" (and also, oddly enough, "healthy", as though those two were synonymous).

Basmat: Genesis 36:3 says she was a daughter of Yishma-El, furthering that family link which we have already pointed out. As noted on her page, she was the sweet-smelling incense linked to the Astarte rites. Astarte was the wife of El, which links neatly to Elon of the Beney Chet, given here as her father. Elon means a sacred tree (literally "the place where the god lives"), often an oak though any robust tree could have served – e.g. the alder, which was Ephron's tree.

Genesis 27:37 makes an interesting observation in the light of the Bacchus-Dionysus remarks. Explaining why he can't bless Esav, Yitschak states of Ya'akov that "with corn and wine have I sustained him". Both of these, of course, belonged to Dionysus in the Greek equivalent.

And in Genesis 27:39, Yitschak's blessing of Esav: "Behold, your dwelling shall be the fat of the land, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by your sword you shall live, and shall serve your brother; and it shall come to pass when you acquire the dominion, that you shall break his yoke from off your neck."

The word here for "fat of the land" is Shemen (שמן) not Beri (ברי), which suggests which meaning of his father-in-law Beri we can prefer. The link to wells also links him to his father-in-law/uncle Yishma-El, who is closely connected to Be'er Lechi Ro'i and to Be'er Sheva.

See the commentary on the blessing in GENESIS 27 for a more detailed exegesis.

In Genesis 28:9, Esav goes to Yishma-El for a third wife, Machalat (מחלת) the sister of Nevayot (נביות). A Machalat is specifically "a harp", though used for various stringed instruments. Genesis 4:21 tells us that the Kinnor-harp was invented by Yuval, who happened to be a son of Adah the wife of Lamech (see below for Adah the "daughter" of Elon the Hittite). The singers in the temples of Astarte were always accompanied by music on stringed instruments, as we know from King David's youthful role in the temple-choir of King Sha'ul (cf Psalms 53:1 and 88:1, both of which specify that the words are libretto for a didactic hymn "to be accompanied by the Machalat-harp", and 88:1 specifically states that the Beney Korach were to sing it). 

Esav thus has wives from every level of the priestesshood: singers, musicians, ritual prostitutes, and the princess whose role is to stand surrogate for the goddess herself: what is being described then is not really a series of marriages at all, but the precise arrangements of what must have been a matriarchal cult, the "court" of the sheikh made up of chamberlains, ladies-in-waiting, etc. Though of course they may well also have been the wives, or at least the concubines, of his extensive harem.

Yet one level is missing: where is the oracular prophetess of the shrine? She of course is Hagar herself, and she is pronouncing her oracles through the jawbone of an antelope, at Be'er Lechi Ro'i.
Nevayot, Machalat's sister, means "high places", and for a long time has been thought (the link names one disputant of this) to give us the generic term "Nabataeans" for that clan of the Beney Yishma-El of northern Arabia who came later to inhabit Petra, the reddest of all red places in Edom. If it is correct, then it provides cause to wonder, en passant and very speculatively, whether we might not reconsider the spelling of Nevayot (נביות). The root Navah (נבה) appears nowhere else and like all such endings (called Lamed:Hey - ל"ה in the Yehudit) is a weak ending that indicates a dialect variation. Can we read its proper form then as an Aleph (א) instead of a Hey (ה)? If so, it would give Nevi'ot (נביאות), and that would just happen to mean "prophetesses", in the plural. Wishful thinking, no doubt!

Genesis 33:14 is where Ya'akov and Esav meet again, surprisingly perhaps at Se'ir.

Genesis 36:2 appears to disagree with 26:34 as to Esav's wives. Here it says he took Adah the daughter of Elon of the Beney Chet, where previously Elon's daughter was named Basmat. Also Ahali-Vamah, the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Tsiv'on the Chivite. Adah almost certainly means "princess" - from Ed (עד) = "prince" - so we may deduce that Adah was her royal title and Basmat her role in the priestesshood (as Hadasah - הֲדַסָּה - became Esther in the Purim story…). Either way the link to Elon establishes a sacred-marriage. Lamech, the former Adah's husband, was a great-grandson of Kayin (Cain), and especially connected to Kayin because of the strange verse about vengeance in Genesis 4:23: "I have slain a man to my wounding and a young man to my hurt; if Kayin shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold." Kayin too was a red-haired, dispossessed, elder twin; and he too ended his wanderings in Se'ir.

Ahali-Vamah (אהליבמה) is interesting because her children by Esav were Ye'ush (יעוש), Ya'lam (יעלם) and Korach (קרח) - and we have already noted that the Beney Korach were to the post-exilic Temple what the Yehudites appear to have been in the temples of the mother-goddess. Her father, we are told (Genesis 36:2), was Tsiv'on (צבעון) the Chivite; but eighteen verses later we are told that Tsiv'on was himself a son of Se'ir the Horite , whose daughter – and therefore Tsiv'on's sister - was Basmat. The word "aholah" (אהלה) meant "a harlot" in the sense of ritual prostitute. So whoever it was that he actually married, we are in a pattern of Chivites and Chorites - the aboriginal inhabitants of Kena'an - becoming connected to Edomites and Yishma-Elites and Kenites through a series of royal marriages that are themselves of cultic importance because the royal family always provided the priests and priestesses for the temples and shrines. These marriages of the dispossessed elder twins ultimately contain virtually every non-Yisra-Eli grouping of ancient Kena'an, and this may well have been the intention of the Biblical redactors, to make a clear distinction between Yisra-Eli and non-Yisra-Eli groups. 

Genesis 36:6 certainly makes clear that all of Esav's family, including his progeny, was accrued in Kena'an, and only after resolving matters with Ya'akov did he leave Kena'an, crossing the river Yarden (Jordan) to establish himself on Mount Se'ir. 36:8 then makes clear again: "thus Esav dwelt on Mount Se'ir. Esav is Edom". There then follows the full list of his descendants and dependents, ending at 36:43 with the statement: "he is Esav, father of Edom - Hu Esav Avi Edom (הוא עשו אבי אדום)".

The outstanding questions about the Edomite departure, given that they were made up from all the original inhabitants of the land of Kena'an and replaced by Aramaean intruders, are these: did they choose to leave, or were they removed by a Biblical process of "ethnic cleansing"? And when - when the Jacobites came in from Padan Aram, or when Yehoshu'a cleansed Kena'an after the conquest

The names Ye'ush (יעוש) and Ya'lam (יעלם) are understood to mean "whom the god hastens" and "whom the god hides", which makes yet one more version of the dispossessed elder son supplanted through the law of ultimogeniture by the younger, though it is not evident who the god is in either case. Note the etymological link between Ye'ush and Yehoshu'a (Joshua).

Copyright © 2019 David Prashker

All rights reserved

The Argaman Press