Edom: The Land of Esau and the Southern Yahweh

Edom sits just south of the Dead Sea, and in the Bible it is always the brother nation. Its people descend from Esau, Jacob’s twin, and they stand in Israel’s way on the road from Egypt. On this site Edom keeps returning for another reason too: several pages trace the earliest memory of Yahweh to the southern deserts, to Seir, Teman and Edom. These are the pages where I found it.

Esau and the Horites

Chronological Nations and Tribes lists the Edomites as descendants of Esau, living southeast of Israel, and the Horites as the people of Edom before them. On Horites, Genesis 36:20-30 lists Horite chiefs inside the genealogy of Esau, which suggests the older people were absorbed rather than wiped out. Anakim adds Genesis 14:5-6, where Chedorlaomer and his allies defeat the Horites in the hill country of Edom, as far as El-Paran.

The twins stay linked. How the Pleiadeans influence the preservation and expansion of human lineages reads Jacob and Esau as the origins of Israel and Edom, two nations that diverge but remain intertwined through shared ancestry.

The road through Edom

On the way to Canaan, Moses asks to pass through. The Book of the Wars of the Lord quotes the answer from Numbers 20:21: “Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border”. The same page sets this beside the scroll Scott Wolter reads in the video Knights Templar Reveals Decoded Jesus Scroll, in which the tribe of Dan is sent to the border of Edom and meets the remnant of the armies that had denied the Israelites entry.

The Oahspe’s version of the Song of Moses, on Book of the Arc of Bon, has the neighbors tremble at the crossing:

Qos, and Yahweh from the south

Edom had its own god. King Hezekiah’s religious reforms names Qos (Qaus) as the primary deity of the Edomites, a national god who guided and protected his people. Yet the god of Israel may have come from the same region. Who Is Yahweh? explains that scholarship often places Yahweh’s earliest memory in the southern deserts, in Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman, and mentions Van Der Toorn on Edomite-Midianite worship of Yahweh before Israel.

The inscriptions point the same way. On “His Asherah”, blessings name “Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah”, and Teman, meaning “south,” likely refers to a region in Edom or southern Judah.

Wisdom and judgment

The law was milder toward Edom than toward Moab: The Gerim quotes Deuteronomy 23:8, under which the third generation of an Edomite may enter the assembly.

The prophets were harder. Lilith appears in Isaiah 34:14 among the night creatures that will haunt the destroyed kingdom of Edom, and the Abraham page mentions Edom’s revolt against Judean rule in 2 Kings 8:20-22.

Related pages

• Horites
• Anakim
• Chronological Nations and Tribes
• The Book of the Wars of the Lord
• Who Is Yahweh?
• “His Asherah”
• The Gerim

For every page I tagged with Edom, see the Edom tag archive.