Gen 36:20-29 (parallel, 1Ch 1:38-42). Descendants of Seir the Horite; - the inhabitants of the land, or pre-Edomitish population of the country. - “The Horite:” ὁ Τρωγλοδύτης, the dweller in caves, which abound in the mountains of Edom (vid., Rob. Pal. ii. p. 424). The Horites, who had previously been an independent people (Gen 14:6), were partly exterminated and partly subjugated by the descendants of Esau (Deu 2:12, Deu 2:22). Seven sons of Seir are given as tribe-princes of the Horites, who are afterwards mentioned as Alluphim (Gen 36:29, Gen 36:30), also their sons, as well as two daughters, Timna (Gen 36:22) and Aholibamah (Gen 36:25), who obtained notoriety from the face that two of the headquarters of Edomitish tribe-princes bore their names (Gen 36:40 and Gen 36:41). Timna was probably the same as the concubine of Eliphaz (Gen 36:12); but Aholibamah was not the wife of Esau (cf. Gen 36:2). - There are a few instances in which the names in this list differ from those in the Chronicles. But they are differences which either consist of variation in form, or have arisen from mistakes in copying.
Of Anah, the son of Zibeon, it is related (Gen 36:24), that as he fed the asses of his father in the desert, he “found היּמם” - not “he invented mules,” as the Talmud, Luther, etc., render it, for mules are פּרדים, and מצא does not mean to invent; but he discovered aquae calidae (Vulg.), either the hot sulphur spring of Calirrhoe in the Wady Zerka Maein (vid., Gen 10:19), or those in the Wady el Ahsa to the S.E. of the Dead Sea, or those in the Wady Hamad between Kerek and the Dead Sea.