Genesis 36

An Irrelevant Genealogy?

We have already noted the significance of some of the genealogies of Genesis. Some of them may appear to be meaningless in their respective and particular contexts, yet they all contribute to our understanding of salvation history. They show us something about God's working in history for the redemption and final salvation of his people.

The preceding chapters have been concerned with the trials of the sons of Isaac, the estrangement and consequent reconciliation between Jacob and Esau. The rest of the book will focus on the role of Joseph as the saviour of the Jewish people in the land of Egypt. At first reading, the genealogy of Genesis 36 seems to contribute little to the ongoing story of Genesis. One of the longest chapters in the book, and certainly one of the longest genealogies, it seems to have little to say that is material to the subject of Genesis.

Yet the whole of the Bible is profitable, and it seems to me that we can see a relevance to this chapter along four lines of thought:

God's Interest In the Land

One of the central features of God's covenant promise was the provision of the land as an inheritance for his people. God had promised Abraham a land, and promised that his descendants would occupy it. This was a direct covenantal, gracious response to the fact that the original 'land' - the paradise of Eden - had been lost to man. What sin had destroyed and taken away, God was to restore in a unique measure.

In Genesis 36:7, we read about the separation between Jacob and Esau. Both their families had grown so large that "the land in which they were strangers could not bear them because of their cattle". The separation between them, on purely physical grounds, also had a deep, spiritual significance. Jacob was marked out as the heir of the covenant promise and the covenant blessing. He and his descendants were to inherit the land. This then prepares the way for the next section of Genesis which will highlight the unfolding drama occurring between the household of Jacob in the land of Israel and that of Joseph in Egypt.

The land in Old Testament theology is a powerful symbol of all that God has promised to be and to do for his people. If we are Christians we have no earthly inheritance - our citizenship, unlike that of the Old Testament church - is based not upon a seen territory, but an unseen inheritance, of which the land of Canaan was a symbol and a type. Esau was excluded from the land. He became a stranger to the promise of the covenant. That privilege was to be enjoyed by Jacob and his sons. The chapter calls us to face the single most important question of all: the question of our own position in relation to God's inheritance in Christ.

God's Interest In History

But the chapter also reminds us of God's interest in historical detail. It is a chapter of tribes and clans, of dukes and kings. God does not judge the history of the world to be of no importance. The events that make up this world's history are of importance to him. The forces that shape our history, and the philosophies that undergird it, are all of significance. Salvation is salvation in history; history is salvation history.

This ought to be reflected in our own interest in all that takes place in God's world. We dare not leave the world as the preserve and interest of an unbelieving generation. God reminds us in the Bible that historical details are of importance to him. He is not a God divorced from history, but a God in history, whose work and whose word are the very fabric from which the cloth of our lives is cut.

God's Interest In People

The genealogy also serves to remind us of God's interest in people. The Gospel is not an impersonal thing. God is not impersonal. He has given us this record of the descendants of Esau and the kings of the Edomites as a powerful reminder of the fact that he takes an interest in the individual lives and the interconnected lives of men and women.

In all our Gospel work, we must be on our guard against becoming so theoretical and so impersonal as to run roughshod over the lives of men and women. Christ is the greatest example of all of what it is to have, and to cultivate a deep and profound interest in others. He went about doing good, as you and I must.

God's Sovereign Purpose

But at last we are reminding in these chapters of Genesis of how God was working out his sovereign purposes of grace. He had chosen Jacob and passed Esau by (see Malachi 1:2ff). The covenant interest of God was to focus in a particular way on the descendants of Jacob, whose relations with the Edomites after this would be so significant in the Old Testament. We are introduced here to the descendants of Esau by way of highlighting the outworking of God's divine plan.

Christians are not fatalists. We do not believe in a blind, meaningless fatalism which we must accept stoically. We believe in a sovereign God whose plan is worked out in a way that impacts our lives, honours our decisions, our personhood and our free will, and means that God will have all the glory at last. The record of the descendants of Esau stands as a potent symbol of the fact that even though sin abounds in human history, grace abounds all the more. Esau has cut himself off from the blessings of the covenant, but God's activity in human history will continue for the glory of his name and the good of his people.