Tsiv'on

צבעון


Genesis 36:2: Esav "took wives from among the Beney Kena'an", including Ahali-Vamah (אהליבמה), the daughter of Anah (ענה) and grand-daughter of Tsiv'on the Chivite.

Genesis 36:20 names the sons of Se'ir the Chorite as Lotan (לוטן), Shoval (שובל), Tsiv'on (צבעון), Anah (ענה), Dishon (דשון), Etser (אצר) and Dishan (דישן). In Genesis 36:2, as noted above, Anah was Tsiv'on's daughter not brother, which suggests they may originally have been matriarchal tribes; Dishon and Dishan are probably the same tribe. Here they are Chorites, but in 36:2 Tsiv'on was called a Chivite. And in 36:21 we will learn that Chori (חרי) was the son of Lotan, suggesting that the Chorites were themselves originally Chivites. Note that Lotan's sons were Chori (חורי) and Heymam (הימם), and that his sister was Timna (תמנע).

Genesis 36:24 then confuses the matter still further. Tsiv'on's sons are given as Ayah (איה) and Anah (ענה); so that Anah now has a third relationship to Tsivon. He is said to be "that Anah who found the mules in the wilderness, as he fed the asses of Tsiv'on his father". Cf Shaul's coronation pilgrimage in 1 Samuel 9. Tsiv'on is now clearly identifiable as the Egyptian Set, ass-god of the red desert and the principal Edomite deity after Se'ir. The ritual of coronation of the sacred king involved a pilgrimage to the principal shrines of ass-worship, and the dramatic ritual of discovering the mules - which is to say, the god's body at his sacrifice is dispersed to the four corners of the world and, as Isis did the body of Osher (Osiris), so its parts had to be collected and reassembled in one burial-place that he might be reborn in the body of the new king. An Ayah, incidentally, still to this day in Egypt as in India, is a wet-nurse: the sort who brought up Mosheh, and Perseus, to name but two, and who appears in the Tanach as Devorah, Rivkah's (Rebecca's) wet-nurse. She would have been the mother of the heir-apparent, probably the wife of the enthroned king, and as such would have counted as surrogate on Earth of the mother-goddess herself. Esav marrying Ahali-Vamah now becomes clearer.

Genesis 36:29 lists the Chorite dukedoms, amongst them Tsiv'on.

The root is Tseva (צבע), which today is used to mean "colour", but anciently meant much more specifically "a dyed garment", and even more specifically a multi-coloured garment, like the one that Ya'akov gave Yoseph 
(Genesis 37:3and the ones the Hyksos "shepherd-kings" are portrayed wearing in the Egyptian manuscripts.

There is a confusion of roots between Tseva (צבע) and Tsava (צבע), one of which means "to moisten", as in dipping clothes into dye; the other means "to ravine", as in a ravenous beast (whence Tsevoyim/צבעים = "gazelles" or "hyenas"); this may well explain the myths of Yoseph's coat of many colours, and his brothers claiming the blood on it came from his being ravaged by a wild beast; the coat would have been given as a badge of office to the Hyksos priesthood, and, in Yoseph's case, as son of the sheikh, would have been his initiation costume at the age of thirteen; each of his brothers would probably have had one too.




Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
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