Bible Synapse
Was Esau’s wife Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite or of Ishmael?
Hard question · Genealogies · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
At forty Esau marries “Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite”.
And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:
Esau also marries “Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth”.
Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.
Esau’s wives are “Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite”, Aholibamah the daughter of Anah, and “Bashemath Ishmael’s daughter, sister of Nebajoth”.
Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Aholibamah the daughter of Anah the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; And Bashemath Ishmael’s daughter, sister of Nebajoth.
The objection
Genesis 26:34 says that Esau married “Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite”. But Genesis 36:3 names “Bashemath Ishmael’s daughter, sister of Nebajoth”, and gives Elon’s daughter a different name, Adah. Critics ask whose daughter Bashemath was.
The answer
Set the two lists side by side and the fathers agree; it is the women’s names that differ. In Genesis 26 and 28 Esau’s wives are Judith, daughter of Beeri; Bashemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite; and Mahalath, daughter of Ishmael, “the sister of Nebajoth”. In Genesis 36 they are Adah, daughter of Elon the Hittite; Aholibamah, daughter of Anah; and Bashemath, daughter of Ishmael, again “sister of Nebajoth”. Both lists give Esau a wife from Elon the Hittite and a wife from Ishmael, and the note about Nebajoth, Ishmael’s firstborn, ties the Bashemath of 36:3 to the Mahalath of 28:9. So Genesis does not give one woman two fathers. It uses the name Bashemath for one wife in chapter 26 and for another in chapter 36.
People in Genesis often carry more than one name (Esau is also Edom, 36:1; Jacob is also Israel), and Hengstenberg and Keil and Delitzsch point out that in the ancient East a woman commonly received a new name at her marriage. Bashemath, Hebrew Bosmath, means ‘spice’ or ‘fragrance’, just the kind of name that could be given to a bride, or pass from one wife to another. On this reading Elon’s daughter was known as Bashemath in the family story and as Adah in Edom’s records, while Ishmael’s daughter Mahalath was known among her descendants as Bashemath. Keil and Delitzsch add that Genesis 36 sets down Edom’s own family records as they stood, which is why its names differ from those in the earlier chapters. The Jewish commentators Rashi and Aben Ezra, reported by John Gill, likewise took Adah to be the Bashemath of 26:34 under another name.
Other answers Christians give
More than three wives
Some readers, as Haley notes, count five or six wives, taking the names in Genesis 36 to be partly different women. On that view Esau married more than one woman of these families, and two of his wives happened to bear the name Bashemath. Either way, neither passage gives the wrong father.
Still open
Why the names changed is not now known, and commentators who hold the Bible to be without error differ over whether Esau had three wives or more. Keil and Delitzsch, following Hengstenberg, also take Judith daughter of Beeri (26:34) to be Aholibamah daughter of Anah (36:2), with Beeri as a second name for Anah; John Gill thought them different women, since both their fathers and their nations differ.
From the classic commentators
Hengstenberg, Keil, and Lange account for this by the fact that women at their marriage received new names. On this hypothesis, Bashemath, daughter of Ishmael, is the same with Mahalath: Adah, daughter of Elon the Hittite, is the same with BashemathJ. W. Haley, Alleged Discrepancies (1874), p. 337