This same settlement of Israel in the northern half of Moab was temporary only. According to Isaiah xv.-xvi. the whole region north of Arnon, which Numbers xxi. represents to us as having been conquered by Moses and which the Fundamental Writing gives to Reuben, is part of the kingdom of Moab. Jeremiah xlviii. also names the cities north of Arnon as Moabite. Hence, in the region between the northern margin of the Dead Sea and the Arnon, the conflict between the two cognate nations of Moab and Israel surged to and fro for centuries. And probably the immediate object of each was the possession of the walled cities. They must have been held first by one nation and then by the other. The country population may have changed less; it fled before the invading foe and submitted to the victor. A large proportion of it was probably Moabite even while Israel was in temporary possession of the cities. And this was, of course, even more the case when the whole of Moab was tributary to Israel.
All the hatred of Israel for the kindred tribe of Moab that defended its territory and won back their conquests from them finds expression in the legend that Moab and the people of Ammon took their rise from the incestuous intercourse of Lot with his daughters (Genesis xix. 30 seq.). The bias of the whole legend is betrayed by its ignorance of the names of the daughters. It is obviously nothing but a malicious travesty of the view that made the Moabites sons of Lot (Deuteronomy ii., ix., xix.).
The figure of Lot, on the other hand, is not an invention of Jewish legend or an interpretation of some physical phenomena observed on the Dead Sea, but the name of a Hebrew or Moabitish clan. The figure of Lot’s wife (who is also anonymous) alone is a nature-myth. It is the interpretation given to a block of rock-salt, exposed by the action of water, on the shore of the Dead Sea, in which the beholders fancied they saw the figure of a woman, an idea found repeatedly in the legendary lore of the most diverse races. A pillar of salt of this kind is shown at the present day. The ethnological origin of Lot, on the contrary, can be maintained with the more assurance since we meet with the adjective “Lotan,” derived from Lot as the name of an Edomite clan in Genesis xxxvi. 20, 29.
The second Hebrew people with which we have to do, the Bene-Ammon, the sons of Ammon or Ammonites, of whose putative descent from Lot’s younger daughter we have already spoken, seems to have been a genuine desert race. The land east of Jordan being occupied by Moab in the south and Israel in the north, there certainly were but few districts fit for tillage left for them. Nevertheless, attempts were not wanting on their part to gain possession of the east side of Jordan.
The Edomites, the third of these Hebrew peoples, were those with whom Israel came most into contact. The close relations and frequent intermixtures which took place between Edomite and Israelite clans find expression in the legend that makes Esau, the progenitor of the tribe, the brother of Jacob and, like him, the son of Isaac of Beersheba. Esau is really the name of a god, and we meet with it again in Phœnician mythology in its Hellenised form of Usoos. The divine nature of Esau is also betrayed in the fact that in the Elohistic text it is he, while in the Yahvistic text, it is God, who meets Jacob at Penuel (Genesis xxxii. 31, 33, seq.). The name of this divinity was probably in old times the name of the clan that worshipped him. At any rate, we never meet with Esau as the collective name of this people; it is invariably Edom. But Edom itself is the name of a half-forgotten god, as is evident from the proper name Obed-Edom.
The Edomites were no more a nation of pure Hebrew blood than the Israelites. They sprang from the fusion of Hebrew immigrants with the population that already occupied the country, on the one hand, and with Arab tribes, on the other. And these two elements which the Edomite race absorbed must have retained their distinctive character to a comparatively late period, for on no other supposition can we explain the extent and definiteness of the information which has come down to us on the subject. In the west, the Edomites spread from the southern margin of the Dead Sea and from the Nachal ha ’Arabum (Brook of the Arab Bushes, now the Wady Alachsi) to the Gulf of Akabah. In the west and north they forfeited much of their nationality. For at one time they occupied the whole of what was afterwards southern Judah, though intermixed with Arab clans. The Edomites united with Judah later—probably constrained to do so by their geographical situation—and possessed the hegemony in the time of David. The capital of this Edomite district was the ancient city of Hebron.
Its union with Judah was naturally accompanied by a corresponding loss to Edom, which from that time forward passed for less powerful than Israel in those parts, whereas, in earlier times, being united under the rule of kings, it had been superior to the kingless state of Israel, divided up into tribes, each eager in pursuit of its personal ends. The national monarchy of Israel is no sooner consolidated than it is strong enough to subdue Edom.
This is expressed in legend by making Esau the elder brother of Jacob, but only the elder of twins, with whom the younger strives even in the womb and tries to prevent him from being the first to issue forth. Ultimately, Esau is cheated of his birthright by Jacob or sells it to him for a mess of pottage. Edom, on the other hand, always maintained his dominions, although for a while under the suzerainty of Israel or Judah, in the wild and barren mountain tract of Seir, which rises to the south of the mountains of Judah. But this is precisely where the aboriginal inhabitants whom the Edomites had found in possession held their ground longest, protected by the unfertility of their country, which made agriculture impossible and compelled its inhabitants to adopt the rude life of shepherds and hunters.
These aboriginal inhabitants were called Horites, i.e. cave-dwellers. There may have been Horite elements even in the Edomite population of southern Judah, for we still find cave-dwellings at Beit-Jibrin (Bethogabris) and meet with Horite clan-names amongst those of Judah.
It may also be conjectured that a very primitive state of civilisation had survived among them, for a great many of these little clans are called by the names of animals. But neither from this circumstance nor from the form of their names can we deduce any conclusion as to the branch of the Semitic race to which these Horites belonged. For the names of animals are found as tribal names among all Semites, and the form of these names—even supposing it to have been handed down accurately—would allow of their being considered either Hebrew or Arabic.
In the course of Jewish history the vicissitudes of the fortune of the Edomite nation occupy us again and again. Just such a Hebrew tribe, or coalition of Hebrew tribes, as they were, amalgamating with the Semitic population already in possession to form the nations of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, was the stock from which, by amalgamation with Canaanite and other elements, the people of Israel sprang. Israel, Men of Israel, Children of Israel, was in historic times the title of honour which it bestowed upon itself and its members. But even after its migration and settlement in the land west of Jordan, the non-Israelite inhabitants of the country called it by the collective name of the Hebrews, and thus it comes about that to this day it bears that name in the speech of all nations, and its language is spoken of as Hebrew.
What, then, is the origin of the national name of Israel? It must have become the name of the nation in the same way as the names of other nations come into being; by extension from one tribe to the whole body of those who belong to the same national coalition. Accordingly, there must once have been a tribe of Israel which distinguished itself in some way and won fame, and whose name was then assumed by others. Nothing of the sort has ever taken place in historic times. But this fact does not affect the correctness of the conclusion that tribal names are very liable to alteration by the division of old tribes and the rise of new ones. This forgotten tribe of Israel, which gave its name to the whole people, may have its dwelling-place in the land east of Jordan, on both banks of the Jabbok, and at the spot where Mahanaim, a city of the highest importance in the earliest period of the monarchy, was situated. For the memories of Israel that survive in legend centre about the land east of Jordan, Mahanaim, and Penuel more particularly. At Mahanaim Jacob sees the army (machane) of angels; or, according to another etymological legend, he there divides his army into two parts (machanajin); at the Jabbok he wrestles with God, or meets with Esau. There he receives the name of Israel.