Genesis36chapter 36

This chapter is a genealogy rather than a narrative, and the classical readers work it as one: they reconcile names, place the chiefs and the kings, and explain why Scripture bothers with Esau's line at all. Rashi identifies Esau's wives here with the wives named earlier under other names, and gives a reason for each change, the first being called by a name meaning spices "because she offered spices (בשמים) as incense to idols", the second on the authority of the Agadic Midrash on the Book of Samuel, which names three classes whose sins are pardoned (Rashi on Genesis 36:2:1 and 36:3:1, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, public domain). Timna the concubine he reads as an argument about Abraham: "This is stated to tell you in what importance Abraham was held", and how eager people were to attach themselves to his descendants (Rashi on Genesis 36:12:1). He takes the chiefs for heads of families, and hands on the explanation of Shabbat 85b that the earlier inhabitants were so called because "they were experts in making the land habitable" (Rashi on Genesis 36:15:1 and 36:20:1). The eight kings of Edom he sets against eight kings of Israel in whose days Edom's kingdom lapsed, naming them from Saul to Jehoshaphat (Rashi on Genesis 36:31:1), and the last name in the list he reads as a question about wealth, the man being so rich that "He was so rich that gold had no value in his eyes", on Genesis Rabbah 83:4 (Rashi on Genesis 36:39:1). Ramban is one of the few places in this half of the book where the corpus carries his English. He explains why a sister is listed under a brother rather than among the sons: "It is the custom of Scripture to trace the genealogy of a daughter through the brothers", and gives the reason for this one, that she was the sister of Lotan on both sides and not of the others (Ramban on Genesis 36:22:1, the Commentary on the Torah by Ramban, translated and annotated by Charles B. Chavel, Shilo Publishing House, New York, 1971 to 1976, CC-BY). On a name that appears in two spellings he rules that the spelling is of no consequence except where both forms stand in one verse, and that two different men are meant here (Ramban on Genesis 36:26:1). Radak works the same problems in the other direction. He notes that the grandchildren of one wife are absent without that meaning she had none, weighs whether one chief is a second man of the same name, and settles that the chief whose name ends in a feminine letter was a man (Radak on Genesis 36:10:1, 36:16:1, 36:19:1 and 36:41:1, translated by Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash, CC-BY). Ibn Ezra comments here at 36:1:1, 36:25:1 and 36:32:1, and the corpus holds no English of him under a licence permitting quotation, so he stands as a citation.