9 This is the history of the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites in the hill country of Seir:
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
And these are the generations of Esau, the father of the Edomites [1] Though Esau had two names, yet in this place the second name refers to his posterity, who are called Idumeans. For, to make it appear what God had bestowed upon him for the sake of his father Isaac, Moses expressly calls him the father of a celebrated and famous people. And certainly, it served this purpose not a little, to trace the effect and fulfillment of the prophecy in the progeny of Esau. For if the promise of God so mightily flourished towards a stranger, how much more powerfully would it put itself forth towards the children, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and consequently the inheritance of grace? Esau was an obscure man, and a sojourner in that country: whence therefore is it, that suddenly rulers should spring from him, and a great body of people should flourish, unless because the benediction which proceeded from the mouth of Isaac, was confirmed by the result? For Esau did not reign in this desert without opposition; since a people of no ignoble name previously inhabited Mount Seir. On this account Moses relates that the men who had before inhabited that land were mighty: so that it would not have been easy for a stranger to acquire such power as Esau possessed, if he had not been divinely assisted.
1 - Patris Edom.
And these are the generations of Esau,.... Or the posterity of Esau, his children and grandchildren, as before and hereafter related:
the father of the Edomites in Mount Seir; from whom they of that mountain and in the adjacent country had the name of Edomites or Idumeans.
(cf. 1-Chronicles 1:36-37). Esau's Sons and Grandsons as Fathers of Tribes. - Through them he became the father of Edom, i.e., the founder of the Edomitish nation on the mountains of Seir. Mouth Seir is the mountainous region between the Dead Sea and the Elanitic Gulf, the northern half of which is called Jebl (Γεβαλήνη) by the Arabs, the southern half, Sherah (Rob. Pal. ii. 552). - In the case of two of the wives of Esau, who bore only one son each, the tribes were founded not by the sons, but by the grandsons; but in that of Aholibamah the three sons were the founders. Among the sons of Eliphaz we find Amalek, whose mother was Timna, the concubine of Eliphaz. He was the ancestor of the Amalekites, who attacked the Israelites at Horeb as they came out of Egypt under Moses (Exodus 17:8.), and not merely of a mixed tribe of Amalekites and Edomites, belonging to the supposed aboriginal Amalekite nation. For the Arabic legend of Amlik as an aboriginal tribe of Arabia is far too recent, confused, and contradictory to counterbalance the clear testimony of the record before us. The allusion to the fields of the Amalekites in Genesis 14:7 does not imply that the tribe was in existence in Abraham's time, nor does the expression "first of the nations," in the saying of Balaam (Numbers 24:20), represent Amalek as the aboriginal or oldest tribe, but simply as the first heathen tribe by which Israel was attacked. The Old Testament says nothing of any fusion of Edomites or Horites with Amalekites, nor does it mention a double Amalek (cf. Hengstenberg, Dissertations 2, 247ff., and Kurtz, History i. 122, 3, ii. 240ff.).
(Note: The occurrence of "Timna and Amalek" in 1-Chronicles 1:36, as coordinate with the sons of Eliphaz, is simply a more concise form of saying "and from Timna, Amalek.")
If there had been an Amalek previous to Edom, with the important part which they took in opposition to Israel even in the time of Moses, the book of Genesis would not have omitted to give their pedigree in the list of the nations. At a very early period the Amalekites separated from the other tribes of Edom and formed an independent people, having their headquarters in the southern part of the mountains of Judah, as far as Kadesh (Genesis 14:7; Numbers 13:29; Numbers 14:43, Numbers 14:45), but, like the Bedouins, spreading themselves as a nomad tribe over the whole of the northern portion of Arabia Petraea, from Havilah to Shur on the border of Egypt (1-Samuel 15:3, 1-Samuel 15:7; 1-Samuel 27:8); whilst one branch penetrated into the heart of Canaan, so that a range of hills, in what was afterwards the inheritance of Ephraim, bore the name of mountains of the Amalekites (Judges 12:15, cf. Genesis 5:14). Those who settled in Arabia seem also to have separated in the course of time into several branches, so that Amalekite hordes invaded the land of Israel in connection sometimes with the Midianites and the sons of the East (the Arabs, Judges 6:3; Judges 7:12), and at other times with the Ammonites (Judges 3:13). After they had been defeated by Saul (1-Samuel 14:48; 1-Samuel 15:2.), and frequently chastised by David (1-Samuel 27:8; 1-Samuel 30:1.; 2-Samuel 8:12), the remnant of them was exterminated under Hezekiah by the Simeonites on the mountains of Seir (1-Chronicles 4:42-43).
*More commentary available at chapter level.