1 Chronicles 1:43–50

1 Chronicles 1:43 — Bela son of Beor, Dinhabah The list opens with Bela son of Beor — a name that invites comparison with Balaam son of Beor (Num 22:5), though these are almost certainly distinct individuals. The Chronicler draws this catalogue verbatim from Genesis 36:31–39, but the act of reproducing it here, at the very head of his great work on Israel's history, is theologically deliberate. The phrase "before any king reigned over the children of Israel" (v. 43) is the linchpin of the entire list: Edom had kings when Israel had none. This should have humbled Israel — their political organization came later and, the Chronicler implies, was given by God rather than evolved from human ambition. Bela's city, Dinhabah, is geographically uncertain, reinforcing that these kingdoms, though real, have faded from memory.

Verses 44–45 — Jobab and Husham Jobab son of Zerah of Bozrah (v. 44) is notable: Bozrah will reappear in prophetic literature as the chief city of Edom subjected to divine judgment (Isa 34:6; 63:1; Amos 1:12). The ancient rabbinical tradition, echoed in some patristic sources, identified this Jobab with the biblical Job — an identification the Septuagint appendix to Job makes explicit. While modern scholarship regards this identification as uncertain, it is theologically suggestive: if Jobab is indeed Job, then a righteous sufferer once sat on the throne of Edom, and the nation that later oppressed Israel once sheltered wisdom and patient endurance. Husham of the land of the Temanites (v. 45) recalls Eliphaz the Temanite, Job's friend — Teman being a region of Edom famed in the ancient world for its sages (Jer 49:7; Obad 1:8).

1 Chronicles 1:46 — Hadad son of Bedad Hadad distinguishes himself from the other kings by a military achievement: he "struck Midian in the field of Moab." This brief martial note interrupts the otherwise bare succession formula and hints at Edom's geopolitical reach into the Transjordanian arena. It is also the only verse in the list that credits a king with an action beyond mere existence and death, subtly elevating Hadad even as the succession formula ultimately levels all of them with the word "died."

Verses 47–49 — Samlah, Shaul, Baal Hanan The relentless repetition of "X died, and Y reigned in his place" (vv. 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49) functions as a literary and theological drumbeat. Each king rises, and each king falls. No dynastic succession is established — these kings do not pass the throne to sons; they simply are replaced. Unlike the Davidic dynasty, which God promises will endure (1 Chr 17:14), Edom's kingship is rootless and serial. Samlah of Masrekah and Shaul of Rehoboth by the River (possibly the Euphrates, suggesting wide-ranging connections) are otherwise unknown, their reigns unrecorded except by the fact of their ending.

Verses 49–50 — Baal Hanan and Hadad/Hadar The list closes with Baal Hanan son of Achbor and a second Hadad (called "Hadar" in the MT of Gen 36:39), whose reign alone is not closed with the formula "died," perhaps because the Chronicler's source ended here or because this king was still reigning. Uniquely, Hadad's wife Mehetabel is named, along with her matrilineal ancestry through Matred and Mezahab — a rare inclusion of female genealogy that may signal Hadad's legitimacy through a notable lineage, or simply preserve a detail the Chronicler's sources recorded faithfully.

Typological and Spiritual Senses The fourfold literal sense of Scripture (CCC 115–118) invites a deeper reading. Allegorically, Edom — born of Esau, who despised his birthright (Gen 25:34) — represents the soul that privileges worldly power and immediate satisfaction over the patient reception of God's promises. The eight kings who rise and fall before Israel's monarchy dramatize the fleeting nature of power sought apart from covenant. Anagogically, the unbroken litany of death points toward the final defeat of all merely human kingship before the eternal reign of Christ — the one King who does not "die and is replaced" but who dies and rises to reign forever.

Catholic tradition illuminates this passage in several interlocking ways.

The Theology of History in Chronicles. The Chronicler writes not as a secular annalist but as a theologian of divine providence. St. Augustine's framework in De Civitate Dei (City of God) is deeply resonant here: the City of Man — embodied in Edom's succession of kings — is characterized precisely by the libido dominandi, the lust for domination, which generates rulers who rise and pass away. The City of God, by contrast, is oriented toward an eternal King. The Chronicler's genealogical prologue (1 Chr 1–9) situates Israel — and ultimately the house of David — within universal history precisely to show that God's redemptive plan encompasses but transcends all nations.

Edom, Esau, and Election. The Catechism teaches that God's election is entirely gratuitous: "God's call comes without repentance" (CCC 218, drawing on Rom 11:29). Paul's use of the Esau-Jacob typology in Romans 9:10–13 — "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated" — is not a statement of arbitrary divine caprice but, as St. Thomas Aquinas explains in Summa Theologiae I, q. 23, a declaration of the sovereignty of grace over natural priority or human achievement. Edom's long-established monarchy, preceding Israel's by generations, makes Israel's eventual theocratic kingship all the more clearly a gift, not an achievement.

Dynastic Instability and the Davidic Covenant. The absence of dynastic succession in Edom's king-list throws into sharp relief the theological weight of God's covenant with David in 1 Chronicles 17. Where Edom's kings are replaced, David's line is promised permanence. The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§15) affirms that the Old Testament, while containing "matters imperfect and provisional," genuinely prepares for and announces the coming of Christ. This list of Edomite kings is one such preparation: its very instability is a shadow pointing toward the one stable King, the Son of David who inherits an everlasting throne (Luke 1:32–33).

The Witness of Lists. Church Father Origen (Homilies on Numbers) insisted that even the most seemingly arid lists of Scripture contain spiritual nourishment for those who seek it patiently. The act of reading this passage is itself a spiritual discipline — an exercise in attentiveness to the whole counsel of God, trusting that no word of Scripture is without purpose (2 Tim 3:16).

For contemporary Catholics, this passage offers a bracing meditation on political power and its limits. In an age saturated with news of elections, the rise and fall of governments, and the cult of political personality, the Edomite king-list reads like a cold archaeological fact: they all died. Their cities are largely unidentifiable. Their achievements — apart from one battle notation about Hadad — went unrecorded.

The Chronicler is not counseling political disengagement. Catholics are called to active participation in civic life (CCC 1915). But this list invites the faithful to hold political investment with a certain detachment — what the tradition calls apatheia or holy indifference. No human political project is the Kingdom of God. Every earthly ruler, no matter how celebrated or feared, is one entry in a list that ends with "died, and another reigned in his place."

The practical application is this: invest in what endures. The Davidic covenant endured not because Israel's kings were great, but because God is faithful. In your own life, the structures that will outlast your death are those built on covenant — your baptismal identity, your family, your parish, your works of charity done in God's name. Everything else is Dinhabah.