And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.
These are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom. This is not meant to indicate that a political revolution had taken place in Edom by the erection of one great consolidated kingdom on the ruins of the simple and primitive distribution of the people into clans. For it is clear, from the preceding, as well as the concluding part of the chapter, that the authority of the kings was co-existent with the rule of the dukes in their respective tribes. In fact, the kingship was not a hereditary, but an elective monarchy (Havernick, 'Historico-Critical Introduction to Pentateuch,' p. 202; Kurtz, 'Hist. of Old Cov.,' 3:, p. 340), analogous to the practice of the large nomad tribes in Arabia which in time of war, or on any great emergency, choose an emir, invested with sovereign authority, to legislate and act for the protection of their common interests. This emir is chosen from among the shiekhs, as the king appears to have been elected from the alluphim (cf. Exodus 15:15 is chosen from among the shiekhs, as the king appears to have been elected from the alluphim (cf. Exodus 15:15 with Numbers 20:14; Isaiah 34:12).
Before there reigned any king over the children of Israel - i:e., previous to the time of Moses, who was virtually the first king in Israel (cf. Exodus 18:16-19 with Deuteronomy 33:5), though the words are usually considered as pointing to the reign of Saul. The insertion of this parenthetical clause was exceedingly natural on the part of the sacred historian, who, having but a few verses before (Genesis 35:11) put on record the divine promise to Jacob that "kings should come out of his loins," was led to remark the national prosperity and regal establishment of the Edomites long before the organization of a similar order of things in Israel. He could not help indulging such a reflection, when he contrasted the posterity of Esau with those of Jacob from the stand point of the promise (Genesis 25:23); and although such a reflection would have been obviously impossible to any ordinary writer, living centuries before the commencement of the Hebrew monarchy, it was quite pertinent in Moses, who not only believed the promise, but actually foretold the fact, and provided for the government, of a king that should reign over the children of Israel (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).
Nevertheless, his observation has been fastened upon as betraying the post-Mosaic origin of his history. And the objection rests on two different grounds-the one general, the other particular. Dr. Davidson ('Introduction to Old Testament') says, 'The list of these Edomite kings may perhaps reach up almost to the time of Moses. It is impossible, however, to show that it reached to his time.'
A similar opinion was previously advanced by LeClerc, Kennicott, and Graves, who, looking to the minuteness of the details respecting the kings, their family descent, the cities of their residence, and even the names of their wives, pronounced the whole passage from Genesis 36:31 to Genesis 36:40 an interpolation, transferred to this place by some copyist from 1 Chronicles 1:43-54, and producing a manifest interruption in the course of the original narrative. But on the view we have given above, that these Edomite kings were elected, and that they reigned contemporaneously with the dukes, there is no break in the narrative.
This catalogue of regal governors occupies its proper place; and the number eight exactly corresponds with the time within which they reigned. From the death of Isaac, when Esau went permanently to reside in Edom, until Moses became leader of the Hebrews, was 236 years. Now, supposing that "Bela, the son of Beer," began to reign 25 years after Esau's settlement, and that each of the kings reigned on an average 25 years-their united reigns would point to a period of 220 years-thus approximating so near to the time of Moses that there is no difficulty in accounting for the very circumstantial information which this register contains.
But Ewald and others maintain the late date of this document on the special ground that Hadad (Genesis 36:35-36) was an enemy of Solomon (1 Kings 11:14), Hengstenberg, however, has triumphantly shown the utter futility of this objection by demonstrating that Hadad, Solomon's contemporary, was the son of a king, the Edomite Hadad-that the former was only a claimant for his father's throne, while the latter actually reigned-that the Hadad mentioned in this passage smote the Midianites in the plains of Moab, while in the days of the Solomonian Hadad the Midianites no longer appear in the sacred history.
Moreover, if Hadad belonged to the late times of Solomon, and he was but the fifth in this list, how could it be said that all these kings reigned in Edom "before there reigned any king over the children of Israel?" (see also Delitzsch and Kurtz, 3:, p. 340.) Lastly, it is a recorded fact, that there was an Edomite king in the days of Moses (Numbers 20:14).