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Genesis 26 describes how Esau married two Hittite women who brought trouble to Isaac and Rebekah. Jubilees 25 draws on this, having Rebecca warn Jacob away from Canaanite wives and recalling how Esau’s marriages brought trouble to her life.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 26:34
Hebrew Bible
32 That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. “We’ve found water,” they reported. 33 So he named it Shibah; that is why the name of the city has been Beer Sheba to this day. 34 When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, as well as Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 They caused Isaac and Rebekah great anxiety.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 25:1
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
1 And in the second year of this week in this jubilee [2109], Rebekah called Jacob her son, and spoke to him, saying: 'My son, do not marry a woman from among the daughters of Canaan, as Esau, your brother, who married two women from among the daughters of Canaan, and they have made me bitter with all their unclean deeds: for all their deeds are sexual immorality and lust, and there is no righteousness with them, for (their deeds) are evil. 2 And I, my son, love you deeply, and my heart and my affection bless you every hour of the day and period of the night. 3 And now, my son, listen to my voice, and do the will of your mother, and do not marry a woman from among the daughters of this land, but only of the house of my father, and of my father's relatives. You shall marry a woman from among the house of my father, and the Most High God will bless you, and your children shall be a righteous generation and holy descendants.'
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
... Genesis reports Esau’s marriage to two Hittites and the bitterness it caused his parents: “When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah” (26:34-35). Perhaps under the influence of the second reference in Genesis to this situation (Genesis 27:46, “Rebekah said to Isaac, ‘I am weary of my life because of the Hittite women’”), Jubilees speaks of the bitterness in relation only to Rebecca. It paints Esau, therefore, as the prime negative example, returning to it again in 27:8 and 35:15, although it is aware that Esau finally marries appropriately when he marries Mahalath a daughter of Ishmael (29:13), but mentions it only incidentally. ...
William Loader, Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in the Early Enoch Literature, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Book of Jubilees (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 162–163.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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