Friends and Relations

Genesis 36-39

When Lauren was a little girl, I used to read to her every night. One of the books that we went back to time after time was a compendium of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. I was always intrigued by Rabbit and the fact that he has good relationships with the minor animals in the forest, who are usually referred to as his "friends-and-relations".

From Genesis 36:15 we see that "the sons of Esau's oldest son, Eliphaz, became the leaders of the clans of Teman..." and from Job 2:11 we see that "three of Job's friends were Eliphaz the Temanite..." So Job's friend was a descendant of Esau, an Edomite. The Lord wasn't happy with Eliphaz' responses to Job, and indeed later the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and Obadiah prophesied the destruction of the Temanites. Wonder what happened to the Shuhites and the Naamathites?

To add to the interrelatedness of the biblical characters, we find in Genesis 37 that Joseph's brothers sell him to some Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt who were descendants of their grandfather Isaac's brother  Ishmael. Finally there is the whole sordid affair of Joseph's brother Judah and Tamar who was married to two of his sons, and whom he later married after he impregnated her when he thought she was a prostitute. Friends and relations indeed.