The Righteous Seed Of Edom

For some reason the Lord has led me to open the following chapter at this precise time. Hopefully, by the time this article is finished, that reason will be made known. Please understand this will be different than most articles, but in the end it should be a blessing. Therefore, for His sake and for ours, bear with me and try to hear every word with both ears...

Genesis Chapter 36 lists the sons and generations of Esau who is Edom. The chapter renders important references, and because you are able to read this remarkable chapter without any help from me, we will not go into it as a study with the exception of four little verses.

To the casual reader these verses may appear insignificant, even boring, but let us look a bit deeper and we will find a rare treasure, hidden by God, in Esau's family tree...

In Verse 4 you will see that Adah, the Hittite, bore Esau his firstborn son, Eliphaz in Hebron, in the presence of his grandfather Isaac, his grandmother Rebecca and his Uncle Jacob. Many years later, when he was of very old age, Eliphaz was one of the three Edomite kings who visited Job in his affliction.

It was from Eliphaz and Timna, his concubine, that Amalek was born(Genesis 36:12)...

In Verses 32-34 we read: "And Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom, and the name of his city was Dinhabah. And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah reigned in his stead..."

Jobab was none other than the Godly King Job, the son of Zerah of Bozrah, who was the son of Reuel who was the son of Esau and Bashemath, who was the daughter of Ishmael (Gen. 36:3).

Consequently Reuel, this second son of Esau, was the grandson of both Isaac and Ishmael, and a nephew to Jacob.

Reuel's grandson, Job, was therefore the great-great grandson of Isaac and Ishmael, the great- great-nephew of Jacob and a contemporary of Joseph.

Beor was the son of Laban, born during Jacob's twenty-one year stay in Haran. Prior to Jacob's arrival in Haran, Laban had two legitimate daughters, Leah and Rachel, and two daughters by his concubine. These were Zilpah and Bilhah who, born in bondage, were given to Leah and Rachel as handmaidens.

As the competition for Jacob's affection grew between Leah and Rachel, their handmaidens were offered to Jacob as concubines, to become surrogate mothers, and in time these handmaidens would each bear Jacob two sons.

God was greatly blessing Jacob, the Covenant maker, and in time the blessings of Jacob overflowed into the household of Laban and sons were born to him in the early years of Jacob's visit. Beor was one of those sons. In later years there was an integration of the sons of Laban and the descendants of Esau when the sons of Laban sojourned to Edom. This may have been early on, soon after Jacob left Haran, or after Laban passed away. In any event, their kingdoms and dukedoms merged with Esau's kingdoms and dukedoms in the Mt. Seir kingdom of Edom.

We can confirm this in the Book of Job where the young speaker, Elihu, the Buzite, addresses Job in Chapters 32-37.

Buz was the second son of Milcah and Nahor (the brother of Abraham). He had a son named Barachel who had a son named Elihu who was first cousin to the children of Jacob and Esau. He was a third cousin to Job.

A little tidbit you may not be aware of is the fact that Milcah and Sarai were full sisters - but only half sisters to Nahor and Abram. The sisters had the same father as their husbands but they had different mothers.

Stay with me now...

These genealogical references give us insight into the wanderings of men - good men and bad men - who settled and shaped this world from so many generations ago we would have no clue as to where the trouble began were it not for the history provided for us in God's Word. Of course one has to dig to find the roots of yesteryear, hidden as they are in thousands of names and dozens of generations, but I for one delight in bringing them into the light again and exposing them as real people with real faces and real destinies who lived real lives, producing real offspring, and who had a real impact on our world today.

So, the sons of the idolatrous Laban walked away from the land of Aram (Syria) and emigrated to Edom. There they settled as dukes and kings for several hundred years, until the day their nation was destroyed. Today, the remnant of their descendants are the residents of Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Gaza and Saudi Arabia under the adopted name - Palestinians.

Once again, as Abraham and Jacob did before them, they have gone down to Egypt, to the snares and slave pits of Pharaoh. They have cast their lots with Ishmael, Esau, Eliphaz and Amalek. Today, they do not call themselves Shemites for they have forgotten their heritage. They are not even called Arabs. Today they call themselves - Palestinians...

Caring people of every tribe keep telling them there is no such race, no such nation, for no such people ever existed. These wandering souls have trusted the lies of their self-appointed leaders for more than half a century, lies that were used to herd them into a puppet dynasty that their ambitious leaders could govern. They are pawns in an ambitious political scam.

They are the offspring of Abraham and Nahor and yet they have been dumbed-down to believe their lives aren't worth snake oil if they can't destroy their brothers in Israel. It didn't happen overnight - but like the flood of judgment that silly men dispute, it did happen. Satan planted the roots deep, a long time ago, and he has duped and destroyed multiplied thousands in every generation since then. Six thousand years have passed and the resentment of Cain for Abel, Ishmael for Isaac, Esau for Jacob, have never been resolved for those they left behind. The hostilities, the jealousies, the distrusts continue today...

Still, there have been periods of peace, of compassion, of clean hands giving to the poor and visiting the sick. Some 3,500 years ago, in the land of Uz, a drama of similar sorts was under way in the courtyard of one called Job...

Elihu was the third generation from Buz, son of Nahor, and Job was the fifth generation from Isaac, son of Abraham.

Elihu had joined the three mourners who had come to comfort Job. But he only listened to their "religious" rantings. Finally, with the debate yielding to silence, a righteous wrath erupted in Elihu. He was angry because Job continually justified himself instead of justifying the Living God. And he was livid because the three friends could only criticize and condemn, they could not answer Job with the truth.

In six chapters, Elihu spits out bold rebuke of Job and his friends, giving us a peek into the timing of Job's affliction which, according to the data gathered from the Scriptures, had to be during the famine.

Remember that five of Esau's sons, including Eliphaz and Reuel, were born in Hebron before Esau moved to Mt. Seir, placing them at ages 36-38 with wives and children of their own by the time Jacob fled from Esau. They were 42-50 years of age by the time Jacob's sons were born, making it possible for Esau to have a 17-year-old great-grandson named Jobab by the time Joseph was born to Jacob.

Jacob was 78 years old when he journeyed to Haran and he was 93 years old when Joseph was born. So he had a late start in marrying and producing his twelve sons and one daughter. Job was 15-16 years old when Dinah was born to Leah just a short time before Joseph was born to Rachel. Dinah was about 7-8 years old when they left Haran and she was 12-13 years of age when she was defiled by Shechem (Chapter 34), meaning she was about 38-40 years of age when the family went down to Egypt.

Joseph was six years old when they left Haran and Benjamin was born near Bethlehem six years later. Jacob was 105 years old when Benjamin was born and a mere five years after that a 17-year-old Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. Twenty years later a 37-year-old Joseph welcomed his father and his brothers to Egypt, to a fertile land called Goshen, a shepherd's dream...

Esau married early and married several women, producing a large family of sons before Jacob fled Hebron. This is why a 5th generation Job could be a contemporary with Jacob and his children.

A 3rd generation Elihu was younger than the 5th generation Job so we can see how quickly the generations emerged in Esau's Edom. We must also remember Laban's late start in producing sons.

If Jacob was in his 80s when Laban began having sons, we can only imagine how old Laban was, taking into account the fact that Isaac and Rebecca were married twenty years before Jacob and Esau were born (she was 14 when they married)...and 78 years later Laban still had no sons. By the time sons were born to Laban, he may have been well over 100 years of age because Rebecca was 112 years of age when Jacob left for Haran. She died at the age of 127, before Jacob returned home...

Because the events in Job take place during the time of a famine, and the characters listed in Genesis 36 and Genesis 22 fit into this time frame, it is reasonable to believe it is the same famine that Jacob and his family suffered. It is possible though not confirmed that Jacob may have visited Job in his affliction. It is possible though not confirmed that Elihu went down to Egypt after the famine and shared the story with Joseph, or perhaps Jacob. This is supported by the fact that pages of the original script of the Book of Job have been found in Egypt, suggesting that Joseph may have been the author of the Book.

However, it is possible that Elihu may have written the Book while it was still fresh in his memory. His eloquent dissertation in Chapters 32-37 lend credibility to this possibility. And of course, it would have had to be written by someone who was present at that gathering in the land of Uz, someone who would have heard first hand the words of Job, his friends, Elihu and of God Himself.

It had to be someone who was close to God, someone who would hear and be inspired by those words as they were recalled to the remembrance of the author by the Spirit of God. No one, hearing it second hand, could have gotten it right, or word for word.

So I lean toward Elihu as the author for this reason. Joseph may have been the caretaker of the manuscript - or perhaps Jacob was. We know that all of Jacob's diaries were taken to Canaan in the Exodus, from which Moses gathered information for the Penteteuch. And we know the only copy of the Book of Job wasn't left in Egypt to decay over the centuries. A copy of the Book made it to Canaan with the rest of Jacob's diaries, for we have had the Book since the Exodus. And it still stirs up the Glory we seek right along with the Penteteuch that Moses wrote in the wilderness.

Job is the first written Book of the Bible which would, of course, place it in this time frame, in the time before Jacob and Joseph died, before the Israelites became the slaves of Egypt. It was written before the law was given at Mt. Sinai for as you will note in the study of Job, there is no mention of the Law.

In Job's day, in Edom as it was in Canaan, devout men of God practiced their faith independently, not with ceremonies or rituals as the pagans did, but with a holy respect, reverence and abiding faith. And so, in the eyes of God, as it was with Noah, Abraham, Melchizadek and Isaac, Job was a righteous man...

So we can see clearly that Job was a real person with a real affliction, a direct descendant of both Isaac and Ishmael, a Godly descendant, a king of Edom. This great-grandson of the scandalous Esau was found by Almighty God to be worthy to be the first mortal man to be remembered and recorded in God's inspired Holy Word.

What was the subject of Job? The subject of Job was his own question: "Why do the righteous suffer?" God's eloquent and soul-stirring response to Job was: "To learn, to see what I see, to save, to be purged, purified and refined as pure gold..."

Job lived to 140 years at the end of his life and he saw his sons' sons, even to the fourth generation, which tells me he lived another 86 years after the famine, having traversed, by my calculation, a seven year span from age 47 to age 54 during his affliction.

There are a few skeptics who feel the Word is misleading or contradictory because it says Job was restored double of all that he lost and yet - he was only restored ten children for the ten children he lost. That was not a double portion, they say.

What the skeptics fail to understand is that the ten children that were taken in the wind storm were not lost - they were still living - they just went on to glory ahead of Job and were waiting for him in Abraham's bosom. So to keep His Word, God gave Job another seven sons and three daughters which allotted him 20 children altogether.

We can and must give thanks with Job for the Almightiness of God Himself, Creator of all things and healer of all diseases and afflictions. As well He is the listener to all our words, discerner of the intents of all our hearts and Judge of all our ways.

He is the God we bow and submit to as Lord over all things, in times and seasons of prosperity, and in times and seasons of trials that spur our spiritual growth. This was what those gathered in Uz learned on that last day, before suppertime, before the sun went down...

I believe God is saying to us today:

"Job was surrounded by near and extended loved ones, yet none of these could alleviate Job's suffering. Though several nations afforded strong and growing family ties - Syria, Mesopotamia (Modern day Iraq), Edom (modern day Jordan) and Canaan (modern day Israel) - there was not one soul in any of these that could fill Job's need or save his life.

"Another famine is coming and many of my children will be tested by those of this world, the prince of this world, and by My Spirit. Remember the faithfulness of Job and remember that those of his own family became his worst enemies. They meant well but they did not have the Spirit to draw from and their counsel, which was of the flesh, had no spiritual balm to ease Job's pain. Neither did they have spiritual authority to stay the spirit of death.

"When famine comes to America, it will begin with the winds as it did with Job. These will be the deadly winds of nature followed by the deadly winds of war. Yet - those that anchor their faith in me shall have no fear. They shall know my peace. They shall mount up with eagles wings, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint - for the Lord of Hosts has declared it..."

Joan Krempel
March 31, 2010
joan@joankrempelministries.com