Was King Herod a descendant of Esau?

Esau is Edom

Genesis turns the twins into nations before they are born: “Two nations are in your womb” (25:23). Esau, born red, earns a second name, Edom, “red,” from the stew he trades his birthright for (25:30). His descendants settle the hill country of Seir, south-east of the Dead Sea, in today’s Jordan.

Esau lived in the hill country of Seir. Esau is Edom.

Through the Bible, Edom stays the brother nation, close and quarrelsome. When Babylon takes Jerusalem in 586 BC, Edom cheers it on: “Raze it! Raze it even to its foundation!” (Psalm 137:7). Obadiah condemns Edom for “the violence done to your brother Jacob” (Obadiah 1:10). Yet the law keeps the family tie.

You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother.

From Edom to Idumea

After Judah fell, Edomites moved west into the hills of southern Judah, around Hebron and Mareshah, while Arab Nabataeans took over their old homeland around Petra. Greek writers called the new Edomite land Idumea. In the late second century BC the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus conquered it and, according to the historian Josephus, let the Idumeans stay only if they were circumcised and kept Jewish law (Antiquities 13.257–258). Within a few generations they counted as Jews. Mark’s Gospel lists people from Idumaea among the crowds who came to Jesus (Mark 3:8), the only time the New Testament names the region.

Herod’s family tree

Herod’s grandfather Antipas governed Idumea for the Hasmonean kings (Antiquities 14.10). His father, Antipater, rose by serving Rome, and his mother, Cypros, came from a noble Nabataean family. So Herod was Idumean on one side and Arab on the other, Jewish by religion, and the king who rebuilt the Temple (his life).

His enemies used that ancestry as a weapon. During the war for Jerusalem, his rival Antigonus, the last Hasmonean king, told the Romans the crown should not go to a commoner and an Idumean, which he glossed as half a Jew (Antiquities 14.403). Herod’s court historian, Nicolaus of Damascus, answered with a pedigree going back to leading Jews who returned from Babylon; Josephus says he invented it to please the king (14.9). The Christian writer Julius Africanus kept a hostile story instead: Herod’s grandfather served in a pagan temple at Ashkelon, and Idumean raiders carried off his father as a boy (Eusebius, Church History 1.6–7).

Brother or foreigner?

Deuteronomy says Israel’s king must be “one from among your brothers,” not a foreigner (17:15). The Mishnah tells of King Agrippa, Herod’s descendant, reading that verse aloud to the people at the Feast of Tabernacles. His eyes filled with tears, and the crowd called out that he was their brother (Mishnah Sotah 7:8). Their words echo Deuteronomy 23:7: an Edomite is a brother. A Talmudic legend even sends Esau’s head rolling into the cave of Machpelah at Jacob’s funeral (Sotah 13a). And it was Herod, heir of Edom, who built the great wall that still encloses that family tomb at Hebron.

Why the rabbis called Rome Edom

In rabbinic writings, Edom and Esau became code names for Rome. Scholars point to several reasons. Rome ruled Judea through an Idumean king. Isaac’s blessing gave Esau the sword, “You will live by your sword, and you will serve your brother” (Genesis 27:40), a fair picture of an empire seen from Jerusalem. And the prophets’ oracles against Edom could be read as promises against Rome: “Saviors will go up on Mount Zion to judge the mountains of Esau” (Obadiah 1:21). A midrash matches four empires with four unclean animals and makes Edom the pig, which shows its split hoof as if to say it is clean (Leviticus Rabbah 13:5). After Rome became Christian, medieval Jewish writers used Edom for Christendom too.