Genesis 36:31

But there is another genealogy (Gen. 36), and strikingly introduced in this place. The Edomite interrupts the course of the line of God's dealings. We see at once what remarkable maturity there was here. It is always so — first that which is natural, afterwards that which is spiritual. Even then we find a rapid development of power in the family of Esau. They were all great people, to be sure — chief after chief, right to the end of the chapter. Even kings, we are told, reigned there before there were any in Israel. I have no doubt that this is given to us as an important element to mark how quickly what is not of God shoots up. Growth according to God is slower, but then it is more permanent.

Edom had kings before Israel had any; that is all that is said. The point to be recorded is that Edom had them at a time when Israel still had none. Edom was a settled nation with regular rule before God's people Israel were. In the chapter before, God had promised that kings would come from Jacob. Yet the natural went first in apparent strength: God's people must wait His time.

The passage in Genesis 36:31, which critics stress most, is surely from Moses… Israel had the promise of kings; Esau had not. Yet Esau had many kings, one after another, long before any sign of royalty appeared in the people who held that promise. If the passage had been written after Saul or David's line began to reign, the wording would have been different — not "any" or "a" king, but "the king" or "the kings."

The list of kings in Edom consists of eight. Now Phinehas was the seventh in descent from Jacob, and he was in full strength and activity in the time of Moses. So the kings of Edom named in Genesis very possibly did not extend beyond the time of Moses, though we are not given the data to fix when they began.

Since no son succeeded his father, some think the Edomite monarchy was elective. But this supposes the people had enough power to choose their own ruler — a democratic principle we have no ground to suppose existed in those early days. Violence and lust of power were there, and bore fruit. The ambitious, unscrupulous man will try to win over the crowds and ride them to power. That is a different thing from an elective monarchy. What we do see in Esau's descendants, and what has marked the world, is rival factions fighting for power, where of course the strongest arm wins. God lets the world show itself, and its power, or rather lack of power, first. Then come His purpose and its firm foundation. For there were kings in Edom before any were found in Israel. The Edomite kings are gone, but God's King remains for ever.

It was no small moral test for the sons of Israel. God had given them His promises, yet Esau's descendants were long settled in peace as lords of their own soil. Jacob and his family, meanwhile, lived as strangers who were only tolerated, and were soon to be slaves — slaves for a long while — in the land of Ham… And the Bible holds, in the same books, both the promise and the trial that early appearances made for faith. It sets it all down calmly, as the word of One who sees the end from the beginning.

This is the first positive mention of a king in Israel, for in Genesis 36:31 the word is mentioned in a purely negative way. David was raised up as a king, a picture of Christ; but only when Christ Himself returns in glory will "the shout of a king" really be heard among them.