by Damien F. Mackey “… Cushan is an Edomite king who subjugated the tribe of Judah whose territory was adjacent to Edom …”. jewishvirtuallibrary In the first two of three cases given here, (i) Balaam and (ii) Cushan-rishathaim, so-called, Aram occurs where I think the correct geography would be Edom. Whereas, in the third case, conversely, (iii) Hadad, the foe of King Solomon, the story is situated in Edom, when I think it should be Aram. (i) Case of Balaam Following a clue from W. F. Albright, I wrote an article: Baleful Balaam son of Beor (1) Baleful Balaam son of Beor according to which Balaam was an Edomite: “Balaam was an ancient Edomite sage”, wrote W.F. Albright (“The Home of Balaam”, Jstor, 1915), whilst himself failing to connect “Balaam son of Beor” (Numbers 22:5) - as do some commentators - with “Bela son of Beor”, who “became king of Edom” (Genesis 36:31). James B. Jordan is one who has proposed such a connection, whilst in the same article including the prophet Job amongst the list of Edomite kings (“Was Job an Edomite King? (Part 2)”, 2000). Job, though, was not Edomite king, but a Naphtalian Israelite: Job’s Life and Times (2) Job’s Life and Times Job would have lived almost a millennium after Balaam and the Edomite king, Jobab, with whom Jordan (as do others) had hoped to identify Job. Jordan has written as follows on this Genesis 36 list of Edomite kings: http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/biblical-horizons/no-131-was-job-an-edomite-king-part-2/ … Genesis 36:31-39 provides us a list of seven kings over Edom, followed by an eighth. 1. Bela ben Beor from Dinhabah 2. Jobab ben Zerah from Bozrah 3. Husham from Teman 4. Hadad ben Bedad from Avith 5. Samlah from Masrekah 6. Saul from Rehoboth 7. Baal-Hanan ben Achbor 8. Hadar/d from Pau …. The third Edomite king was Husham, the second was Jobab, and the first was Bela son of Beor. I suggest that this Bela is to be linked with Balaam son of Beor (Numbers 22:5). We know that there were already kings in Edom at this time, because one such king denied Moses passage through his territory (Numbers 20:14-21). If this king was Bela son of Beor, Balaam would possibly be his brother. The name Bela is written bela` while the name Balaam is written bil`am. The E in Bela is short, and could easily shorten further to an I if the name is extended, as it is in the name Bilam: Bela is accented on the first syllable, while Bil`am is accented on the second, after a break in sound. Thus, it is entirely possible that Bela and Balaam are the same person. The name seems to be a shortened form of Baal, which means "lord, husband, eater." Bela, as first king of Edom, would be "Lord/Husband/Eater," while Balaam means "Lord/Husband/Eater of a People." (Compare the Babylonian god Bel with the Canaanite god Baal for a similar association.) The lord of a people is their husband, and "eats" them into himself as a body politic, as part of his body. …. Whether Bela and Balaam were the same person or not, the fact that they are both sons of Beor, the only mention of any "Beor" in the Bible, indicates the strong possibility that they were at least brothers, and thus contemporaries. …. Now, assume that Bela and Balaam are the same person. Moses put this man to death right at the end of the wilderness wanderings (Numbers 31:8 — and the mention of Balaam the son of Beor alongside five kings of Midian heightens the possibility that Balaam was Bela, king of Edom). …. [End of quote] (ii) Case of Cushan-rishathaim I explained the geographical situation for this oppressor of Israel in my article: Cushan rishathaim was king of Edom (1) Cushan rishathaim was king of Edom “Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushan rishathaim ... and the children of Israel served Chushan rishathaim eight years”. Judges 3:8 The version of the Bible from which I recently read this verse, Judges 3:8, had Cushan rishathaim as “king of Edom”; whereas I had usually read him as being a “king of Aram Naharaim”. There is, of course, a fair bit of distance between Edom, to the south of Israel, and Aram Naharaim, in Upper Mesopotamia. Armed with this new piece of information, I decided to re-visit the list of Edomite kings to be found in Genesis 36, in anticipation of perhaps finding there a name like Cushan (כּוּשַׁן). Having previously thought to have identified Balaam in that Edomite list (following Albright): William Foxwell Albright a conventional fox with insight ‘outside the box'’ (1) William Foxwell Albright a conventional fox with insight 'outside the box' and knowing that Balaam (at the time of Joshua) to have pre-existed Cushan (the time of Othniel), I checked for an appropriate name not far below King No. 1 in the list, Bela ben Beor (or Balaam son of Beor): 1. Bela ben Beor from Dinhabah 2. Jobab ben Zerah from Bozrah 3. Husham from Teman 4. Hadad ben Bedad from Avith 5. Samlah from Masrekah 6. Saul from Rehoboth 7. Baal-Hanan ben Achbor 8. Hadar/d from Pau King No. 3 looked perfect for Cushan, or Chushan: namely, Husham (or Chusham, חֻשָׁם). Later I would learn that other scholars (see below) had already come to this same conclusion (i.e., Husham = Cushan). In the following brief article, the jewishvirtuallibrary will query both long names associated with this enemy of Israel, the “Rishathaim” element and the “Naharaim” element. “The second element, Rishathaim ("double wickedness"), is presumably not the original name”, and: “The combination Aram-Naharaim is not a genuine one for the period of the Judges”: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/cushan-rishathaim CUSHAN-RISHATHAIM (Heb. כּוּשַׁן רִשְׁעָתַיִם), the first oppressor of Israel in the period of the Judges (Judg. 3:8–10). Israel was subject to Cushan-Rishathaim, the king of Aram-Naharaim, for eight years, before being rescued by the first "judge," *Othniel son of Kenaz. The second element, Rishathaim ("double wickedness"), is presumably not the original name, but serves as a pejorative which rhymes with Naharaim. The combination Aram-Naharaim is not a genuine one for the period of the Judges, since at that time the Arameans were not yet an important ethnic element in Mesopotamia. In the view of some scholars, the story lacks historical basis and is the invention of an author who wished to produce a judge from Judah, and raise the total number of judges to twelve. Those who see a historical basis to the story have proposed various identifications for Cushan-Rishathaim: (1) Cushan is to be sought among one of the Kassite rulers in Babylonia (17th–12th centuries; cf. Gen. 10:8). Josephus identifies Cushan with an Assyrian king. Others identify him with one of the Mitannian or Hittite kings. (2) Cushan is an Egyptian ruler from *Cush in Africa (Nubia; cf. Gen. 10:6; Isa. 11:11, et al.). (3) The head of the tribe of Cush, which led a nomadic existence along the southern border of Palestine. Such Cushite nomads are mentioned in the Egyptian Execration Texts of the first quarter of the second millennium B.C.E. and in the Bible (Num. 12:1; Hab. 3:7; II Chron. 14:8; 21:16). (4) Aram (Heb. ארם) is a corruption of Edom (Heb. אדום) and Naharaim is a later addition. Thus, Cushan is an Edomite king who subjugated the tribe of Judah whose territory was adjacent to Edom. (5) Cushan is from central or northern Syria, and is to be identified with a North Syrian ruler or with irsw, a Hurrian (from the area of Syria-Palestine) who seized power in Egypt during the anarchic period at the end of the 19th dynasty (c. 1200 B.C.E.). In his campaign from the north to Egypt, he also subjugated the Israelites. Othniel's rescue of the Israelites is to be understood against the background of the expulsion of the foreign invaders from Egypt by the pharaoh Sethnakhte [sic], the founder of the 20th dynasty. BIBLIOGRAPHY: E. Taeubler, in: HUCA, 20 (1947), 137–42; A. Malamat, in: JNES, 13 (1954), 231–42; S. Yeivin, in: Atiqot, 3 (1961), 176–80. Point 4 above: “... (4) Aram (Heb. ארם) is a corruption of Edom (Heb. אדום) and Naharaim is a later addition. Thus, Cushan is an Edomite king who subjugated the tribe of Judah whose territory was adjacent to Edom”, will now be viewed as the relevant one, with the addition of Husham the Temanite as the actual identification of this “Edomite king”. Avrāhām Malāmāṭ has, I think, managed to sew it all up, following Klostermann. In “Cushan Rishathaim and the Decline of the Near East around 1200 BC” (Jstor 13, no. 4, 1954), Malāmāṭ wrote (p. 232): The second component of the name Cushan Rishathaim is even more obscure and is undoubtedly a folkloristic distortion of the original form. ... Among the various efforts to ascertain the original name, those of Klostermann and Marquart have found the widest acceptance. Klostermann's proposal was that רִשְׁעָתַיִם originally represented [` נ] תימ ה ש[א]רֵ, “chieftain of the Temanites”, and identified כּוּשַׁן with חֻשָׁם, “(Husham) of the land of the Temanites”, who is third in the list of the kings of Edom (Gen. 36:34). .... Understandably, those who proposed that Cushan Rishathaim reigned in the south of Palestine could not believe the name Aram-Naharaim or Aram (Judg 3:10) to be the genuine form. They accepted the emendation of Aram to Edom, a proposal made as far back as Graetz. Naharaim was considered as a later gloss inserted for the sake of rhyming with Rishathaim. .... Consequently, our passage was viewed as the echo of a local struggle between the Edomites (or Midianites) and Othniel the Kenizzite, the leader of a southern clan related to the tribe of Judah. .... Given the lack of detail associated with the oppression of Israel by Cushan, this scenario appears to make more sense than my previous notion that Cushan was a significant Mesopotamian (perhaps Assyrian) king controlling Palestine. It was more of “a local struggle”. This now means that I must also re-consider Dr. John Osgood’s view (as previously discussed) that the Khabur culture in the north was archaeologically reflective of the period of domination by Cushan. We would need to look instead for a localised cultural dominance. (iii) Case of Hadad Solomon’s Adversaries I Kings 11:14-22: Then the Lord raised up against Solomon an adversary, Hadad the Edomite, from the royal line of Edom. Earlier when David was fighting with Edom, Joab the commander of the army, who had gone up to bury the dead, had struck down all the men in Edom. Joab and all the Israelites stayed there for six months, until they had destroyed all the men in Edom. But Hadad, still only a boy, fled to Egypt with some Edomite officials who had served his father. They set out from Midian and went to Paran. Then taking people from Paran with them, they went to Egypt, to Pharaoh king of Egypt, who gave Hadad a house and land and provided him with food. Pharaoh was so pleased with Hadad that he gave him a sister of his own wife, Queen Tahpenes, in marriage. The sister of Tahpenes bore him a son named Genubath, whom Tahpenes brought up in the royal palace. There Genubath lived with Pharaoh’s own children. While he was in Egypt, Hadad heard that David rested with his ancestors and that Joab the commander of the army was also dead. Then Hadad said to Pharaoh, ‘Let me go, that I may return to my own country’. ‘What have you lacked here that you want to go back to your own country?’ Pharaoh asked. ‘Nothing’, Hadad replied, ‘but do let me go!’ But was this Hadad really a Syrian (Aramite), rather than an Edomite? 2 Samuel 10:13 Commentaries: So Joab and the people who were with him drew near to the battle against the Arameans, and they fled before him. Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible And Joab drew nigh, and the people that were with him, unto the battle against the Syrians,.... Fell upon them; attacked them first, began the battle with them; rightly judging, that if they, being hired soldiers, were closely pressed, they would give way, which would discourage the Ammonites, who depended much upon them; and the fight, according to Josephus (x), lasted some little time, who says, that Joab killed many of them, and obliged the rest to turn their backs and flee, as follows: and they fled before him: the Syriac and Arabic versions in this verse, and in all others in this chapter where the word "Syrians" is used, have "Edomites", reading "Edom" instead of "Aram", the letters "R" and "D" in the Hebrew tongue being very similar. (x) Ut supra. (Antiqu. l. 7. c. 6. sect. 2.) ….