The Red King's Dead End
Introduction: The Necessary Negative
Modern Christians, particularly of the evangelical stripe, have a tendency to treat the Bible like a curated collection of inspirational quotes. We love the highlight reel: David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion's den, the Sermon on the Mount. But when we come to a chapter like Genesis 36, a long and dusty list of the descendants of Esau, our eyes glaze over. We are tempted to skip it, to get back to the "real story" of Joseph that follows. But to do this is to fundamentally misunderstand how God tells His story. It is to miss the profound importance of the necessary negative.
The Bible is a book about two seeds, two lines, two cities. From the moment God promised enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent in Genesis 3:15, all of human history is the outworking of that conflict. In order to understand the line of promise, the line of Jacob, the City of God, you must also understand the line of rebellion, the line of Esau, the City of Man. God does not just show us what He is building; He shows us, in painstaking detail, the alternative. He shows us the dead end. This chapter is not a pointless detour; it is a monument to folly, a carefully recorded history of the man who sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. It is the genealogy of a ghost.
Before God unfolds the glorious story of Joseph, a story of suffering and vindication that prefigures Christ Himself, He pauses. He takes a full chapter to detail the generations of the covenant breaker. Why? To show us that the world is busy. The world builds. The world has its dukes and its kings. The City of Man looks impressive, organized, and powerful. But it is all built on the sand of rebellion, and its end is dust. This chapter is a warning and a comfort. It is a warning against the spirit of Esau, which is the spirit of godless pragmatism. And it is a comfort, showing that God is sovereign even over the lines He rejects. He has their number. He knows all their names. And He records their history before turning back to the true story, the only story that ultimately matters: the story of redemption through the line of promise.
The Text
Now these are the generations of Esau (that is, Edom). Esau took his wives from the daughters of Canaan: Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Oholibamah the daughter of Anah and the granddaughter of Zibeon the Hivite; also Basemath, Ishmael’s daughter, the sister of Nebaioth. And Adah bore Eliphaz to Esau, and Basemath bore Reuel, and Oholibamah bore Jeush and Jalam and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan.
(Genesis 36:1-5 LSB)
The Man Defined by His Appetite (v. 1)
The chapter begins by identifying its subject, and it does so with a crucial parenthetical.
"Now these are the generations of Esau (that is, Edom)." (Genesis 36:1)
Names in Scripture are never arbitrary. They are revelatory. Esau means "hairy," which points to his rustic, physical, and untamed nature. He was a man of the field, a man of impulse. But God does not let us forget his other name, the name that defines his legacy: Edom. Edom means "red." This name is a permanent memorial to the central act of his life, the moment he despised his birthright and sold it for a bowl of red stew. "Feed me some of that red stuff," he said, panting like an animal (Gen. 25:30). And so God, in His terrible irony, names him after his lunch. His entire identity, his generations, his nation, are forever branded by his stomach.
This is the essence of worldliness. The worldly man, the carnal man, is the one who trades the eternal for the immediate. He trades the birthright for the bowl of stew. He trades the blessing of God for the satisfaction of his appetites. And God says, "Fine. You want to be defined by that? Then that shall be your name." The Holy Spirit makes sure that every time we read of the Edomites, we remember the red stew. We remember that this is the nation founded by a man who could not control his belly. This is the antithesis of living by faith. Esau lived by sight, by smell, by taste. And this is the record of where that life leads.
The Treason of the Marriage Bed (v. 2-3)
The very next thing we learn about Esau is the foundation of his household. And it is a foundation of deliberate rebellion.
"Esau took his wives from the daughters of Canaan: Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Oholibamah the daughter of Anah and the granddaughter of Zibeon the Hivite; also Basemath, Ishmael’s daughter, the sister of Nebaioth." (Genesis 36:2-3 LSB)
We must understand what a profound act of defiance this was. This was not a simple matter of personal preference. This was high treason against the covenant. His grandfather Abraham had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his son Isaac would not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan (Gen. 24). His father Isaac had explicitly commanded his brother Jacob, "You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan" (Gen. 28:1). These marriages were a grief to Isaac and Rebekah (Gen. 26:35). Esau knew the command. He knew the stakes. And he did it anyway.
By marrying Canaanite women, Esau was not just choosing spouses; he was choosing a worldview. He was choosing to merge his line with the very people whom God had designated for judgment. He was saying, "I will build my future with the cursed, not the blessed." He was planting his family tree in polluted soil. Look at the names. Adah means "ornament." Oholibamah means "tent of the high place," which reeks of idolatry. He is marrying for external beauty and pagan religion.
And as if that were not enough, he also marries the daughter of Ishmael. He is actively consolidating the lines of the rejected. He is forming a coalition of the disinherited. This is the City of Man in its embryonic form: a union of all who stand outside the covenant of promise, bound together by their shared resentment of the line of faith. This is a foundational principle: the world corrupts the people of God most effectively not through persecution, but through intermarriage. If you cannot beat them, join them, and in joining them, defile them. Esau is the poster child for being unequally yoked.
The Fruit of a Polluted Root (v. 4-5)
These rebellious unions, predictably, bear fruit. Verses 4 and 5 list the first generation of this new, blended, anti-covenantal people.
"And Adah bore Eliphaz to Esau, and Basemath bore Reuel, and Oholibamah bore Jeush and Jalam and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan." (Genesis 36:4-5 LSB)
A bad root cannot produce good fruit. A polluted spring cannot bring forth pure water. These sons, Eliphaz, Reuel, Jeush, Jalam, and Korah, will become the fathers of the clans of Edom. They are the progenitors of the nation that will be a perpetual thorn in the side of Israel. The enmity that began in the womb between Jacob and Esau is now institutionalized. It is given names, a lineage, and a national destiny. The conflict is about to get much bigger.
Notice the last phrase: "who were born to him in the land of Canaan." This is a crucial detail. Esau is setting up his rebellious household right in the heart of the Promised Land. He is attempting to possess the land by worldly means, through assimilation and alliance with the Canaanites. Jacob, at this point, is still a sojourner, a man with no land of his own, living by faith in a future promise. Esau is the pragmatist. He is putting down roots, making connections, building his kingdom now. To the outside observer, Esau's strategy would have looked far more sensible than Jacob's.
But this is always the way of the world. The City of Man builds with the bricks and mortar of the present age. It looks strong, stable, and successful. The City of God, by contrast, often looks like a tent, a temporary dwelling, waiting for a city whose builder and maker is God. Esau's sons were born in Canaan, but they had no right to it. They were squatters on God's holy ground, and their presence there was a temporary defiance that God would, in His own time, deal with decisively.
Conclusion: Two Lines, One Lord
So what are we to do with this list of names? We are to see in it the stark contrast between the way of the flesh and the way of the Spirit. Esau's story is the story of every person born in Adam. We are all born "red," defined by our appetites. We are all born with a rebellious desire to marry the world, to make alliances with the enemies of God, and to build our own kingdom in our own strength.
The line of Esau is the broad road that leads to destruction. It is filled with dukes and kings, and it looks very impressive for a time. But it has no future. It is a genealogical dead end. The nation of Edom will rise, it will fight against Israel, it will be judged by the prophets, and it will ultimately vanish from the pages of history.
The line of Jacob, by contrast, is the narrow road. It is filled with flawed patriarchs, dysfunctional families, and centuries of slavery. It often looks weak and foolish. But it is the line of the covenant. It is the line that God has chosen, the line He preserves, and the line through which the Messiah, Jesus Christ, would come. It is the only line with a future.
The gospel is the good news that we who were born as sons of Esau can be adopted and made sons of Jacob. Through faith in Jesus Christ, the true Israel, we are grafted into the line of promise. God takes us out of the kingdom of red stew and places us into the kingdom of the resurrected Son. He calls us to renounce our treasonous alliances with the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to enter into a marriage covenant with Christ.
Therefore, let us not despise these genealogies. Let us see them for what they are: a map of two destinies. And let us give thanks to God that while we were still Edomites, living for the red stuff of this world, Christ bought our birthright back, not with a bowl of stew, but with the precious red blood of His cross.