That Isaac should have lived all his life long in the southern desert, and that his name should have been associated with none of the ancient sanctuaries of Canaan, Beer-sheba alone excepted, is perhaps curious when we bear in mind a passage in the prophecies of Amos (vii. 9), where it is with Northern Israel and not with Judah that the name of the patriarch is connected. Isaac, however, was as much the forefather of the Israelites of Samaria as he was of those of Jerusalem; and the use of his name by the prophet shows only that he was no mere Jewish hero, but was regarded as an ancestor of the whole Israelitish nation. For the whole of Israel, Isaac was no less historical than Abraham or Jacob. That Isaac’s dwelling-place should have been in the desert of the south agrees well with the fact that he was the father of Edom as well as of Israel. He thus lived on the borderland of the two peoples who afterwards boasted of their descent from him. Esau, from whom the Edomites traced their origin, was the elder of his two twin sons. The name has been connected with that of the Phœnician deity Usous, but Usous is really the eponymous god of the city of Usu, in the neighbourhood of Tyre. Esau took possession of the mountains of Seir. Here he partly absorbed, partly destroyed the older races, the Amalekites or Bedâwin whose descendants still prowl among the wadis of Edom, and the Horites whom a somewhat doubtful etymology would turn into Troglodytes or dwellers in caves. Edom itself, the ‘Red’ land, took its name from the red hue of its cliffs. It was a name which went back to a remote antiquity, for among the Egyptians also the desert-country which stretched away eastward into Edom was known as Desher, ‘the Red.’ The punning etymology in Genesis (xxv. 30) preserves a recollection of the true origin of the name. The territories of Esau extended southward to the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. Here were the towns of Elath and Eziongeber, through which the merchandise of the Indian Ocean was conveyed northward, enriching the merchants and princes of Edom in its passage through their land. To the north Edom was in touch with the peoples of Canaan. The wives of Esau, we are told, were ‘of the daughters of Canaan’ (Gen. xxxvi. 2); one of them at least was Hittite, and another, according to one account (Gen. xxvi. 34), bore the name of the ‘Jewess.’ But other wives were taken from the tribes of Arabia. Bashemath was the daughter of Ishmael and sister of a Nabathean chief, while Aholibamah was the daughter of a Horite who belonged to the primeval race of Seir.