Hebrew Priests at the High Places

 

Assyrian relief of an attack on the high place of Kalhu (Nimrud).

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The Hebrew ruler-priest caste served at the high places of the ancient world. Many of these were under the authority of regional kings who had fortresses at high elevation for defensive purposes. The high place complex usually included a palace, treasury, temple or shrine, housing for servants, officials and priests, and a garrison. That is why some scholars note that even though bamah is translated as “high place” or “hill shrine,” many were located in populated areas.

The word bamah can also refer to a horned altar made of stone. The priests who served the ruler of the high places offered sacrificed on those altars. Because these high places were places of burnt offerings, they are often described as places of kar. The term kar is associated with charcoal and soot. The Turkish kara means "black." In Magyar, korom refers to soot, as does the Korean word kurim.

Many high places were rock shelters, signified by the term kar or car. Some have been identified in the Carpathian range. The range is called Karpaty in Czech, Polish, and Slovak, and Карпати in Ukrainian and Bulgarian, Carpați in Romanian, Karpaten in German, Kárpátok in Hungarian, Karpati in Serbian, and in Albanian, karpë means "rock."

The wife of Esau the Younger was called Oholibamah which means high tent or high place tabernacle. She was Horite Hebrew (Gen. 36).

The Hebrew ruler-priests served at such prestigious high places as Heliopolis (biblical On), and Uruk (biblical Erech).

The early Hebrew ruler-priests were concerned with establishing kingdoms. The kingdoms were delivered to the proper heirs by their fathers. That sounds Messianic. None of their kingdoms have survived. However, the kingdom of one of their direct descendants will endure forever. This was accomplished through the Cross and the third day Resurrection. "And of His kingdom there will be no end."

Related reading: Helen White, "High Places, Altars and the Bamah"; Karampetsos, Karambet, Karoutes; Who was Oholibamah?

Two Named Esau

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

This kinship diagram shows that there are two named Esau in Genesis. Esau the Elder was a contemporary of Seir the Horite (Gen. 36). As with most high-ranking Hebrew rulers, Esau had two wives. Sorting out their names is a challenge since Genesis 36:1-5 gives the impression that there was only one Esau and that he had four wives. Knowledge of the two-wife marriage pattern of the early Hebrew helps to sort out the confusion.

Esau the Elder married Adah, a daughter of Elon the Hittite. Esau the Younger married Oholibamah, the daughter of Anah, a female chief of the clan of Seir. One of the rulers named Esau married Judith, a daughter of Berri or Beerah (Gen. 26:34).

Both Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger are related to the Horite Hebrew of Edom. The "sons of Esau" who dwell in Seir are designated as kinsmen to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 2:4. The Greeks called Edom Idumea which means "land of red people". Esau is described as hairy and red. The Horite Hebrew of Edom were known to have a reddish skin tone. King David also was described as reddish, owing to his Edomite blood. 

David's father Jesse had a son named Jerimoth. Jerimoth married an Edomite princess named Mahalath (2 Chron. 11:18). Mahalath is the name of a wife of one of the rulers named Esau. The repetition of male and female names reflects the practice of endogamy among the Hebrew, a ruler-priest caste of great antiquity.

Naming practices of the early Hebrew

We often find two Horite Hebrew persons with the same name in the Bible. There are two early Hebrew rulers named Enoch, two named Lamech, two named Nahor, two named Esau, two named Joktan, and two named Korah. When we find two with the same name separated by a generation, we have evidence of the cousin bride's naming prerogative by which the second wife of the ruler named her first born son after her father.

The pattern is shown in this diagram. Lamech the Elder is shown with his two wives at the top. His daughter Naamah married her cousin Methuselah and named their first-born son Lamech after her father.

The cousin bride's naming prerogative was already a custom in the time of Lamech (Gen. 4). Naamah's first-born son Lamech was named after his maternal grandfather in whose territory he would one day serve as a high-ranking official.

Familiarity with the cousin bride's naming prerogative enables us to recover the names of some chiefs who have been given symbolic names, that is, names that are etiological etymologies. For example, Leah's first-born son was called Reuben. One theory says that his name derives from raa beonyi, meaning "Yahweh has seen my misery." A second explanation relates the name to Leah's hope of winning Jacob's love by bringing forth a son. In this case, the name derives from yeehabani, meaning "he will love me." It is more likely that Reuben is ra'a ben, meaning "behold, a son."

However, Jacob's first-born son by Leah is named Reu. That name appears in the Hebrew king lists of Genesis 11. Reu is the son of Peleg, the son of Eber. Reuben's first-born son is called Hanock which is a variant spelling of the name Enoch (Gen. 4:17; Gen. 5:18) and Anak.

Esau's name is explained as referring to the color red: Edom (Gen. 36:2). This could as easily be translated "ruddy", an adjective applied to King David who had Edomite blood through Tamar. The same source relates the name to an abundance of hair: “The first to be born was red, altogether like a hair cloak; so they named him Esau.” (Gen. 25:25)

What is the origin of the name Esau and what connection does it have to the central message of the Bible? Cheyne associates the name with "Usu" of Tyre. (Stade's "Zeitschrift," 17.189) Hiram, the king of Tyre, was allied by kinship to David. Hiram has the ancient Egyptian root HR which mean most high one. It is the same root that appears in the name Hur, Moses’ brother-in-law. Hur’s grandson was one of the builders of the Tabernacle. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur as the "father" of Bethlehem, a Horite Hebrew settlement. In other words, the Hiram of Tyre and David of Bethlehem had common Horite Hebrew ancestors. The Genesis king lists and Ezekiel 28:11-19 indicate that the Hebrew lineage can be traced back to Eden.

The Horite Hebrew believed in God Father and God Son. They believed that the Son of God would be born of their ruler-priest bloodlines and that He would reveal himself to his people. This was fulfilled when Jesus, the Son of God, visited Tyre (Matt. 15:21-28; Mark 7: 24).

David had Edomite blood through Tamar and was descended from the most ancient priestly line through Oholibamah and the Horite Hebrew chief Zibeon. This is why II Samuel 8:18 speaks of David's sons as being priests. They were of the priestly line from which Jesus came. So, we find a parallel between Oholibamah and the Virgin Mary. Oholibamah means the High Tent/elevated Tabernacle. She is an ancestor of Messiah through David, and her mother's name is Anah. Likewise, the Virgin Mary's womb became the tabernacle of the Christ our God, and her mother’s name was Ana.


Related reading: Cousin Brides; Horite and Sethite Mounds; Hebrew Names and Titles; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Seats of Wisdom; Chiefs of Edom; The Pattern of Two Wives

Esau in Yoruba Tradition

Alice C. Linsley

In Genesis, Esau is the victim of trickery and betrayal by his brother Jacob. When Jacob returns from Paddan-Aram, Esau greets him warmly and offers to help him settle his wives, children and flocks in the land.

In this action, Esau embodies forgiveness. It has been noted that the name Esau is also spelled Issa, which is a variant of the name Jesus.

There are two named Esau in Genesis and both represent respected leaders among their people. Esau the Elder married the daughter of Elon. Their son Eliphaz married a daughter of Seir the Horite (Gen. 36).

Esau the Younger, Jacob's brother, married a high ranking Horite woman named Oholibamah. Her name means Exalted Tent or Most High Tabernacle and she is a type of the Virgin Mary.

According to Yoruba tradition, Esau was a Ketu ruler. This connects him to the Jebusites and the royal house of Sheba.  Abraham's second wife was Ketu-ra and she lived at Beer-Sheba (the Well of Sheba).

Is it possible that Euro-Christian thinking has presented a distorted idea of Esau? Has Esau "been unfairly slandered by overzealous Christians and their sympathizers?"  That is what Remi Oyeyemi argues in this article in Sahara Reporters.


Related reading:  Who Was Oholibamah?; Two Named Esau; Keturah: Wife or Concubine?; Biblical Sheba Linked to East African Settlements; Edom and the Horites; Ido, Edom, Idumea

Edom and the Horites

Hebron (where Sarah lived) and Beersheba (where Keturah lived) are in Idumea.
Abraham's territory extended between the settlements of his two wives
and was entirely in the region of Edom or Idumea.

Alice C. Linsley

The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus and his mother Hathor, the patroness of Horite metal workers. The word "Horite" is the English variant of the word Horim, the term Jews use when speaking of their ancestors. Hathor and Horus are archetypes of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. They are the principal characters of the proto-Gospel among Abraham's Nilo-Saharan cattle-herding ancestors.

The Horite rulers of Edom are listed in Genesis 36. Abraham's territory was entirely in the region of Edom. It extended on a north-south axis between Hebron and Beersheba and on an east-west axis between Engedi and Gerar. This region was called Idumea by the Greeks which means "land of  red people."

Horite priests were attached to the rulers of many territories in the ancient world. Some are associated in ancient Egyptian records with the Shasu on Nubia and Edom. Lists of place names in Nubian temples of Soleb and Amara West record six toponyms located in “the land of Shasu.” A monument of Ramesses II claims that he “has plundered the Shasu-land, captured the mountain of Seir”in Edom; a 19th Dynasty letter mentions “the Shasu-tribes of Edom” and Ramesses III declares that he has “destroyed the Seirites among the tribes of the Shasu.” Clearly, the Egyptians regarded the Shasu as a prominent part of the Edomite population which is described in Genesis 36.

The Horites controlled a vast region from Southern Arabia to Syria. Petra reflects Horite belief and the rulers of Petra and the other Nabataean cities had Horus names. Petra is in the red sandstone mountains of Edom, a territory in modern Jordan. According to Genesis 36, Edom was ruled by the Horite clans of Seir and Esau the Elder who married Adah. Esau the Elder was a contemporary of Seir the Horite.

Esau the Younger married Oholibamah. It is possible that Esau the Younger was Jacob's half-brother, rather than his twin. Their father was Isaac, but they would have had different mothers, as Horite rulers had two wives.

The territory over which they ruled was rich in copper and within the Horite caste there were highly skilled metal workers.  The patroness of their mines and smelting operations was Hathor, the virgin mother of Hor who was called "son of God/Ra."

Edom (BAR photo)

The Horite metal workers of Edom used the same techniques as the Horite metal workers who lived in the Timna Valley in the Wilderness of Paran. Esau the Elder's son Eliphaz married Seir's daughter who was named Timna.

The soil at Timna is also reddish-brown. Some scholars believe that there must have been a Timna in Edom as well in Paran, but it is more likely that the Horites controlled the metal working industries from Egypt to Jabal Harun (Aaron's Mountain) in Jordan. Timna is a Horite name.

Timna metal working shop

Edom is a variant of the Hausa odom which mean reddish-brown and the Hebrew adam which also means reddish-brown, the color of the soil from which God made the first man. The original context of the story of Adam is Nilotic. Adam is derived from the root DM which refers to blood (dam in Hebrew; dammu in ancient Akkadian). This is a reference to the color of the soil (adamah) from which Adam was made. 

Abraham's ancestors lived where red soil washed down from the Ethiopian Highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic Cambisols have a strong brown or red color. The copper in the hills of Edom resembled the soil color of the "Red Land" (Deshret/dshrt) of the Nile Valley.

Esau is called "Edom" and the rabbis made much of how he sold his birthright for a pot of red stew, but this idea comes from a later period than when Esau lived, approximately 1980 to 1920 B.C. 

According to Yoruba oral tradition, Esau was the third king of Ketu. The kingdom of Ketu is in the present-day Republic of Benin.  Abraham's cousin wife was Keturah. The Jebusites (Ijebu) who controlled Jerusalem were divided into clans and one clan was called Ketu.

Earlier Coppersmiths

Abraham interacted with the Hivities and Hittite clans of Het who are listed in Genesis 10.  HT is the Hebrew and Arabic root for copper - nahas-het. Nahash means serpent. As an adjective it means shining bright, like burnished copper. The clans of HeT were Bronze Age coppersmiths. The serpent image was sacred for them, just as it was for Moses and the people of Israel in the wilderness.

Genesis 23:3-20 tells us that the descendants of Heth were living in the land of Canaan where Abraham lived. He bought a burial site from them. They considered Abraham “a prince of God” among them (Gen. 23:6)

The Hittites spread into Anatolia and introduced iron work there. They didn’t call themselves “Hittites” (an anachronism) but Nes or Nus (Nuzi), and their language was called Nesli. They were Afro-Asiatic metal workers, and the root of their original name is NS.

Related reading: Solving the Ainu Mystery; Edo. Edom and Idumea; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Tamar of Timnah; The Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; Petra Reflects Horite Belief

Who was Oholibamah?

Alice C. Linsley

Oholibamah is one of the most fascinating women in the Old Testament. Her name means "most high tent" or "high tent shrine" and she is mentioned six places in Genesis 36. Based on the genealogical information in Genesis 36, we may conclude that she was associated with the Horite Hebrew priests of the royal house of Seir. Seir ruled over Edom and appears to a successor to the earlier rulers of Edom, including Abraham and Isaac.

Oholibamah's mother was the female clan chief, Anah. Her father's identity is not known. It appears that the authority was vested with the mother in this case. That would mean that Oholibamah required permission from her mother's household to marry Esau the Younger, the son of Isaac and Rebecca.

We find a similar pattern with Rebecca. Rebecca ran to her mother's household for permission to marry Isaac (Gen. 24:28).

Esau the Younger is named after his maternal grandfather, following the custom of the cousin bride's naming prerogative. Looking at the diagram above, we must imagine daughters born to Esau by his two wives Basemath and Adah, daughters of the great Hittite ruler Elon. One of these daughters married Isaac and named their first born son "Esau" after her father. The identity of this daughter is a riddle that remains to be solved, but that daughter appears to be Rebecca.

It appears then that Rebecca's royal mother from whom she sought permission to marry Isaac was Basemath. Basemath is a royal name that means perfume. It is the Hittite version of the name Keturah which also means perfume. Keturah was Abraham's cousin wife.

The cousin bride's naming prerogative is also seen in the kinship of the family of Moses. Amram had two wives: Ishar and Jocheded. Ishar is identified as the cousin wife because she named her first born son Korah, after her father.

© 2004 Alice C. Linsley

Diagram of Moses’ Ancestry

       ∆ Seir
׀

           ∆ Zibeon

׀

         O Anah

׀
                    Esau ∆ = O Oholibamah (Gen. 36)

׀

                        ∆ Korah the Elder
׀

                      Ishar  O =  ∆  = O  Jochebed

               ׀       ׀
              Korah ∆      ∆ Moses

Here we again encounter Oholibamah. She is the only woman in Genesis whose mother, Anah, is figured in the line of descent in place of the father. Anah was the daughter of Zibeon. Genesis 36:24 tells us that Zibeon had a son named Aiah. Yet it is Anah, his daughter, who takes center stage as the mother of Oholibamah. Aiah is mentioned only once inn the Bible, but Anah and Oholibamah are mentioned repeatedly.

That Anah and her daughter Oholibamah are important is evident from the diagram above. It is rare that females are listed in the line of descent of chiefs. In Oholibamah's case, she is listed because of her status - not because her father had no sons. We are told that she had a brother named Dishan.

Genesis 36:2 tells us that "Esau took his wives from the daughters of the Canaanites: Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite; Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; and Basemath, Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nebajoth." However, Genesis 26:34 states that Basemath is the daughter of Elon the Hittite. How are we to resolve this apparent contradiction?

We must look at the location of Isaac's first encounter with Rebecca. Abraham's servant fetched Rebecca from Paddan-Aram and brought her to Isaac in the region of Beersheba. This was the territory of the Ishmaelites. It appears that the Hebrew clans of Mesopotamia and the Hebrew clans of the Negev intermarried and someone assigned Basemath to the Ishmaelite Hebrew.

Oholibamah is remembered as a wife of Esau and that marriage was arranged because of Oholibamah's high rank. she was probably the daughter of a Hebrew priest. She is important also as the mother of Korah, also a priest. The word "Korah" refers to a priest who shaves his body inn preparation for his time of service at the shrine or temple.

Korah the Elder is the maternal grandfather of Korah the Younger who opposed Moses in the wilderness. Korah the Younger is Amram's son by his cousin bride Ishar.

According to Genesis 36:5, Esau and Oholibamah had three sons: Jeush, Jalam, and Korah. All were born in Canaan. Korah the Younger died when the earth opened and devoured him and his fellow conspirators who defied Moses' authority in the wilderness (Numbers 26:10). Here we find the continuing theme of competition between two brothers, and see that the events described in Exodus and Numbers are not far removed from those narrated in Genesis.

According to Genesis 36:18, Oholibamah's three sons became the chiefs of their clans. Someone of Oholibama's clan "found the hot springs in the desert, as he pastured the donkeys of his father Zibeon" (Genesis 36:24b).

Again we see that the cousin bride named her first-born son after her father. We first saw this in Genesis 5 with Naamah, Methusaleh’s cousin bride, who named her first-born son ‘Lamech’ after her father. We found it also with Keturah, Abraham's cousin bride, who named her first-born son Joktan after her father.

Genesis 36 poses difficulty because Anah is also listed as a ‘son’ of Zibeon (verse 24) and Oholibamah is listed as an Edomite chief (verse 41). "These were the names of the chiefs of Esau, in their tribes and places, in their countries and nations: Chief Timnah, Chief Alvah, Chief Jetheth, Chief Oholibamah, Chief Teman, Chief Mibzar, Chief Magdiel, and Chief Zaphoim." The term ‘son’ in reference to these two women means person through whom descendents are traced and 'chief' suggests that Oholibamah was the titular head, not necessarily the ruler.

Oholibamah is an enigma. She is mentioned repeatedly as an important woman of Edom, yet little is known of her. Her connection to the house of Korah is indisputable, and Korah's claim to the rights of primogenture were probably justified.

David had Edomite blood through Tamar and Moabite blood through Ruth. Likely, David's priestly can be traced through Oholibamah. This is why II Samuel 8:18 speaks of David's sons as being priests. They didn't serve in the office of priest, but they were of the Hebrew ruler-pries caste, and this was the lineage of Jesus Messiah.

Oholibamah appears to prefigure the Virgin Mary. Her royal mother's name was Anah, a variant of Anna. The Virgin Mary, whose womb became the tabernacle of the Most High God, was the daughter of Anna. Oholibamah, an ancestor of David, is another type of the Woman in Genesis 3:15, but Genesis 3:15 finds fulfillment in Mary, the Mother of God.

There is a lovely Toparion appointed for this Sunday in the Orthodox Church. Here are the words:

Prepare, O Bethlehem, for Eden has been opened to all!
Adorn yourself, O Ephratha, for the tree of life blossoms forth from the Virgin in the cave!
Her womb is a spiritual paradise planted with Divine Fruit:
if we eat of it, we shall live forever and not die like Adam.
Christ comes to restore the image which He made in the beginning!

Related reading: Was Mary A Dedicated Royal Virgin?; The Mother's House and the Father's House; God's Word Never Fails; Mary's Priestly Lineage; The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Descent); The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Right to Rule)