Was Anah the daughter, the son or the brother of Zibeon?

The ‘daughter’ in Genesis 36:2 is Aholibamah, not Anah. The Hebrew runs ‘Aholibamah, daughter of Anah, daughter of Zibeon’: two steps of her descent, one after the other. Hebrew bat, ‘daughter’, like ben, ‘son’, is used of a granddaughter as well as a daughter, so the phrase means that Aholibamah was Anah’s daughter and Zibeon’s granddaughter. The BSB translates it just so: “Oholibamah daughter of Anah and granddaughter of Zibeon the Hivite”. John Gill and Keil and Delitzsch read it the same way. Nowhere is Anah himself said to be a woman: he fed “the asses of Zibeon his father” (36:24), and his children were Dishon and Aholibamah (36:25).

The brother and the son are two different men. Seir’s sons included Zibeon and Anah (36:20; 1 Chronicles 1:38), and Zibeon in turn had two sons, Ajah and Anah (36:24; 1 Chronicles 1:40). Zibeon, it seems, named his son after his brother, and Genesis marks the difference itself: “this was that Anah” who found the hot springs, a note that may well be meant to tell him from the other Anah. Names often ran on in this way within a family. The same chapter has a Dishon among Seir’s sons (36:21) and another Dishon, Anah’s son, in the next generation (36:25).

The ancient versions: ‘son of Zibeon’

The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint and the Syriac read ‘Anah the son of Zibeon’ in Genesis 36:2, and the Samaritan and the Septuagint read it again in 36:14. Adam Clarke preferred that reading, which agrees with 36:24 and 1 Chronicles 1:40. In Hebrew ‘son’ (bn) and ‘daughter’ (bt) differ by a single letter, so a copyist could easily write one for the other. If the old versions keep the original wording, the slip belongs to the copying, and the original writing, held to be without error, called Anah Zibeon’s son. Either way, the verse does not make Anah a woman.