Parshat Vayishlach5 min read

Eight Kings Ruled Edom and None of Them Could Hold the Throne

Bela sat in Dinhabah and died. The next king was not his son. Eight times the chair of Edom filled, and eight times it emptied.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Bela Sat Down in Dinhabah
  2. The Chair Kept Changing Hands
  3. Balaam Looked at the Tents
  4. The Plan That Did Not Need a Curse
  5. Speak to the Whole Congregation

Bela son of Beor sat down in Dinhabah and ruled Edom. Then he died. They looked for a son to take the chair. There was no son.

Eight Kings Ruled Edom and None of Them Could Hold the Throne Click for full size

The throne passed to a stranger.

Bela Sat Down in Dinhabah

This was before any king reigned over the children of Israel. Esau's country had a chair and a city and a name, and it could not keep a line. Bela held the throne. The city was called Dinhabah. Then the room went quiet, and the chair was empty, and the next man who sat in it was not from Bela's house.

Jobab son of Zerah of Bozrah sat down. He ruled. He died. Husham from the land of Teman sat down. He ruled. He died. Hadad son of Bedad, who had slain Midian in the field of Moab, sat down in Avith. He had a victory to his name. The victory did not give him a dynasty. He died. The chair waited.

The Chair Kept Changing Hands

Samlah of Masrekah sat. Died. Shaul of Rehoboth by the river sat. Died. Baal-hanan son of Achbor sat. Died. Hadar sat in Pau, and his wife's name was Mehetabel. Even a named wife did not hold the line. Eight kings ruled Edom. None of them passed the throne to a son. None of them could hold it.

Not conquered. Not pulled down in a palace revolt, one after another. Just gone. A kingship that killed its occupants and cycled through families was not building anything. Eight men sat in that chair and vanished, and the chair was still waiting when the eighth was gone.

Israel, in those days, had no king at all. It had tents. It had a people that could still be spoken to as one.

Balaam Looked at the Tents

Later, on the heights above the camp, Balaam son of Beor tried to curse that people and could not. He set his face toward the wilderness to recall the calf they had made, looking for a sin heavy enough to hang a curse on. The Spirit of prophecy seized him instead.

He lifted his eyes and beheld Israel dwelling together by their tribes. He saw doors arranged so as not to look into the doors of their companions. He saw houses of instruction. "How beautiful are your tents," he said, and the words came out as schools and gardens by streams, not as a camp he could break.

He looked toward Edom too. He saw the Edomites driven out before Israel. He saw a people with a chair that never stayed in one family, and a people with no chair yet who still sat in tribes that could be counted.

Balak dismissed him in fury. Balaam could not sell a curse. He sold a plan instead.

The Plan That Did Not Need a Curse

"Go, furnish tavern houses," Balaam said. "Employ seductive women to sell food and drinks cheaply, and bring this people together to eat and drink, and commit whoredom with them, that they may deny their God. Then in a brief time will they be delivered into your hand, and many of them fall."

He could not knock Israel down from outside. He would teach Moab and Midian to take the foundation away from inside. Balak went on his way and appointed the daughters of the Midianites for the tavern booths at Beth Jeshimoth, after the counsel of Balaam the wicked, at the dividing of the way.

Edom's kings had failed to hold a throne because nothing under them bound a father to a son. Balaam's counsel was to strip Israel of the thing Edom had never possessed, and leave them as eight empty chairs with different names.

Speak to the Whole Congregation

Before any of that, in Egypt, God had told Moses to speak to the whole congregation of Israel. Not to a king. Not to a chair. To the people as one body. The speaking was on Rosh Chodesh. The taking of the lamb was on the tenth. The slaughtering was on the fourteenth. A people that can be timed together can be addressed together.

Moses spoke. The congregation heard. Lambs were taken. Blood went on the doorposts. They walked out as one, and Edom, up in the hills of Seir, was already cycling through strangers on a throne that would not stay filled.

Eight kings ruled Edom before Israel had one. The list ends without a son. The chair is still in the sentence, waiting, while a congregation that can be spoken to walks toward a mountain and a law.

EdomKingsProphecyEsauKabbalah
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Book of Jubilees 38:19Book of Jubilees

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC-BY

Book of Jubilees turns to The Forgotten Kings of Edom Before Israel Had Kings.

Chapter 38 of Jubilees, in particular, offers a tantalizingly brief list of Edomite kings. It's almost like a forgotten family tree of rulers who held sway "before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." Imagine the world at that time! What were their lives like? What stories did they tell?

The text names them one after the other, a kind of ancient roll call:

“And Bâlâq, the son of Beor, reigned in Edom, and the name of his city was Danâbâ.”

Bâlâq. Danâbâ. Just the names evoke a sense of a distant, almost mythical past. We don’t know much about him, other than his name and the city he ruled. Was he just? Was he cruel? Was he wise?

“And Bâlâq died, and Jobab, the son of Zârâ of Bôsêr, reigned in his stead.”

Then comes Jobab, son of Zârâ, from Bôsêr. The line of succession continues, each king stepping onto the stage for a brief moment before fading back into the mists of time.

“And Jobab died, and ’Asâm, of the land of Têmân, reigned in his stead.”

Next, ’Asâm from the land of Têmân. Têmân itself is a place name that echoes through biblical literature, often associated with wisdom. Was ’Asâm known for his wisdom as well? We can only speculate.

“And ’Asâm died, and ’Adâth, the son of Barad, who slew Midian in the field of Moab, reigned in his stead, and the name of his city was Avith.”

Finally, we meet ’Adâth, son of Barad. Ah, but ’Adâth is more than just a name on a list! He's described as having "slain Midian in the field of Moab." Now that's a story! We get a hint of conflict, of battles fought and victories won. This single phrase opens up a whole world of possibilities. What led to that battle? What were the consequences?

The Book of Jubilees doesn’t tell us. These are just snippets, glimpses into a world before Israelite kings, a world with its own dramas and its own heroes. and villains, no doubt.

Why does the text include this seemingly simple list? Perhaps it's to give context, to place the history of Israel within the interplay of human civilization. Or maybe it's to remind us that even before the rise of Israel, there were other kingdoms, other peoples, with their own stories to tell.

And what can we learn from these glimpses into the past?

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Targum Jonathan on Numbers 24Targum Jonathan

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862 · Public Domain

Bileam tried one last trick before delivering his final oracle. According to the Targum's version of (Numbers 24), he "set his face toward the wilderness, to recall to memory the work of the calf which they had there committed." He was trying to conjure Israel's worst sin, the Golden Calf, as ammunition for a curse. It did not work.

Instead, the Spirit of prophecy seized him, and what came out was poetry. The Targum transforms Bileam's famous blessing of Israel's tents into a vision of their schools and houses of study. "How beautiful your houses of instruction, in the tabernacle where Jacob your father ministered!" The tents were not dwellings, they were academies. Their disciples sat in "fellowships of their schools" like gardens by flowing streams, and "the light of their faces shone as the brightness of the firmament which the Lord created on the second day."

The messianic prophecy in this chapter gets its most explicit Targum expansion. "From them their King shall arise, and their Redeemer be of them and among them." The first king would wage war against Amalek and be exalted above their king Agag, a clear reference to King Saul, "but because he had spared him his kingdom will be taken from him." The Targum reads Israel's entire royal history into Bileam's oracle.

The most dangerous moment came after the blessings ended. Furious Balak dismissed Bileam, and the sorcerer offered his parting counsel, a plan that appears nowhere in the Torah's version of this scene. "Go, furnish tavern houses, and employ seductive women to sell food and drinks cheaply, and bring this people together to eat and drink, and commit whoredom with them, that they may deny their God." Bileam could not curse Israel with words, so he designed a trap of pleasure and assimilation. "Then in a brief time will they be delivered into your hand, and many of them fall."

The final oracle names Israel's future enemies by their later identities. A prince of Jacob's house "will destroy and consume the remnant that have escaped from Constantina the guilty city" and will "lay waste the rebellious city, even Kaiserin the strong city of the Gentiles." The Targum reads Rome and Constantinople directly into Bileam's ancient prophecy, collapsing thousands of years into a single vision.

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Mekhilta Tractate Pischa 3:4Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Mechilta, translated by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein · CC-BY

"Speak to the whole congregation of Israel." The Mekhilta works out the calendar of the first Passover in Egypt by carefully fixing each command to its proper day. The speaking, the instruction Moses delivered to the people, was on Rosh Chodesh, the first of the month; the taking of the lamb was on the tenth, when each household set aside its animal; and the slaughtering was on the fourteenth, the eve of the redemption. The sages then test this arrangement against an alternative, in the manner of midrashic argument. You say this, the Mekhilta poses, but perhaps the speaking and the taking were both on the tenth and only the slaughtering on the fourteenth, collapsing the first two events into one day. To settle the question the text turns back to Scripture, for it is written "This month is for you. Speak." The word "month" anchors the speaking to the head of the month itself. When, then, was the speaking? It must have been on Rosh Chodesh, the very beginning of the month, not ten days later. Having proven that the speaking belonged to the first of the month, the Mekhilta concludes that you must revert to the first formulation. The speaking was on Rosh Chodesh, the taking on the tenth, and the slaughtering on the fourteenth, so that the events of the first Passover unfold across the month in their fixed and ordered sequence.

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