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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.
Jubilees 25:1
Pseudepigrapha
1 In the second year of this week, in this jubilee [2109], Rebecca summoned her son Jacob and spoke to him: ‘My son, do not marry any of the Canaanite women like your brother Esau who has married two wives from the descendants of Canaan. They have embittered my life with all the impure things that they do because everything that they do consists of sexual impurity and lewdness. They have no decency because what they do is evil.’ 2 ‘I, my son, love you very much; my heart and my affection bless you at all times of the day and watches of the nights.’ 3 ‘Now, my son, listen to me. Do as your mother wishes. Do not marry any of the women of this land but someone from my father's house and from my father's clan. Marry someone from my father's house. The most high God will bless you; your family will become a righteous family and your descendants will be holy.’
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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. ...
Loader, William R. G.
Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in the Early Enoch Literature, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Book of Jubilees
(pp. 162-163) Eerdmans, 2007
* 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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