Like the Ishmaelites, like the Israelites themselves, it was long before the Edomites submitted to the rule of a king. At first they were divided into tribes, each of them under a shêkh. In Israel the shêkhs were entitled ‘judges,’ a title borrowed from the Canaanite population; in Edom they bore the name of _alûphim_, which the Authorised Version renders by ‘dukes.’[76] The old name still survived down to the time of the Exodus, as we may gather from its use in the Song of Moses (Exod. xv. 15). But when the wanderings in the wilderness were almost over, and Israel was preparing to invade Palestine, the ‘dukes’ of Edom had already been superseded by kings. It was a ‘king of Edom’ to whom Moses sent messengers from Kadesh praying for a ‘passage through his border,’ and it was a king of Edom who refused the request. But the ancient spirit of independence still lingered; and, as we may gather from the extract from the Edomite chronicles preserved in Gen. xxxvi., the monarchy was elective. The son never succeeded the father on the throne, the royal dignity passed from one division of the kingdom to the other, and each city in turn became the capital.[77] Though Esau was the elder, the birthright passed to the younger brother. Israelitish tradition knew of more than one occurrence which accounted for this. It was told how Esau had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage; it was also told how it had been stolen from him by the craft of his brother Jacob. Naturally, the first tradition was more favoured in Israel, the second in Edom, and the union of the two in the book of Genesis is a proof of the diligence with which the writer of it has gathered together all that was known of the past of his people as well as the impartiality with which he has used his materials. Perhaps both stories owed their preservation to the play upon words which was connected with them. The ‘red’ pottage served to explain the name of Edom, the craft of the younger son the name of Jacob.[78]