THE HORITES. 



511 



Dislian : these are tlie dukes that came of Hori, among their dukes 

 in the land of Seir." Genesis xxxvi. 20-30. Among these we find 

 tliat Anah, the father of Aholibamah, is (Gen. xxxvi. 2) the son of 

 Zibeon ; it is, therefore, probable that Dishon, the father of Hemdan, 

 &c., may be the son of Anah. This would reduce the number of 

 lines to five. If, however, Timna, the concubine of Eliphaz, the son 

 of Esau (Gen. xxxvi. 12), be the same as Timna, the sister of Lotan, 

 it is manifestly impossible to make Lotan a contemporary of Zibeon, 

 Anah, or even Dishon. Zibeon must have lived about the time of 

 Abraham ; and Shobal, Ezar and Dishon, if they are his brethren, at 

 the same period. The importance of this Horite line may be judged 

 from the fact of its reappearance in the first chapter of the first book 

 of Chronicles, where the above genealogy is given with some slight 

 variations in the orthography of the individual names. 



It is, to say the least, remarkable that a genealogy connecting with 

 the family of Abraham in a way comparatively unimportant should 

 be given at such length. Esau had other wives, Hittites, of Elon 

 and Beeri, yet nothing appears concerning their families but the 

 names of their fathers. Now the Hittites were a powerful people 

 even at the time of Esau, and waged successful wars with many of 

 the Pharaohs in later years. True, we find a brief account (Gen. 

 xxii. 20) of the immediate descendants of ISTahor, the brother of 

 Abraham, from whose family came the wife of Isaac and the two 

 wives of Jacob ; but this is not to be wondered at seeing that these 

 were so intimately connected with the great patriarch himself. The 

 sons of Abraham by Keturah, the children of Ishmael, and those of 

 Esau, are, as we might expect, named, in some cases, with their 

 grandsons. But nothing is recorded of the families to which Hagar, 

 or Keturah belonged; the name of Ishmael's wife is not even 

 mentioned ; and no genealogy enlightens us in regard to the connec- 

 tions formed by the heads of the Twelve Tribes. A simple mention 

 of the immediate progenitors of Aholibamah would not have been 

 matter of great surprise ; but this long Horite genealogy certainly 

 ought to be so with every serious student of the Mosaic record. 



Still more extraordinary should this list appear, if, as almost all 

 writers who have treated of them suppose, the Horites were an 

 obscure race of uncivilized troglodytes, whom the Edomites without 

 much difiiculty extirpated. Strange that the great lines of Egypt 

 and Assyria should pass without notice ; that the powerful families 



