ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף בראשית 36:43

You should know that the Torah is entirely clear, spoken by the divine dynamis,¹¹⁵Or: from the mouth of gevurah, the God of power. containing not a single letter or vowel point that is not needed. All of it is a divine structure, hewn out in the name¹¹⁶Perhaps should read: “hewn out of”; mi-shemo rather than bi-shemo. of the blessed Holy One. There is no difference between “Timna was the concubine of Eliphaz” [Gen. 36:12] or “the chieftain of Magdiel, the chieftan of Eram” [Gen. 36:43] and the ten commandments or “Hear O Israel” [Deut. 6:4]. Whoever deletes a single letter is like one who deletes God’s whole name and a whole world. Therefore it was necessary that the letters and words be counted, that plene and lene¹¹⁷“Full” and “lacking,” two ways of spelling Hebrew words. spellings be recorded, forms written but not pronounced, as well as forms pronounced but not written, open and closed beginnings of sections [i.e., paragraph divisions], larger and smaller letters. Let this be implanted in your heart and inscribed within you. Take care for your soul and lend no ear to [those who] say that Ezra the Scribe added things of his own accord as he copied it, such as “The Canaanites were then in the land” [Gen. 13:6] or “Behold his bed, a bed of iron” [Deut. 3:11].¹¹⁸These passages seem to indicate a later narrative voice, as was already noted by several medieval authors. See commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra to Deut. 1:2. This is total heresy, that of which the rabbis spoke in the chapter called “A Portion,” on the verse “For he has despised the word of the Lord” [Num. 15:31]: “This refers to one who says ‘Torah is not from heaven.’ Even one who says that all of Torah is from heaven except for a single verse that Moses spoke on his own: such a person ‘despises the word of the Lord.’”¹¹⁹b. Sanhedrin 99a.

ואלה שמות אלופי עשא למשפחותם למקומותם, among the “Alufim” listed in the verses following there are several who had been mentioned earlier simply as sons of Esau. We must assume that these sons eventually rose in rank to become “Alufim.” We already mentioned that the title “Aluf” essentially means that the people so described were mayors of cities, which is most likely the reason why the Torah adds the word למקומותם, “in their respective locations.” Proof of the correctness of what I surmise may be the fact that in Chronicles all the details provided by the Torah here in this chapter are repeated verbatim. However, the first list of the “Alufim” of the sons of Esau (36,15-19) are not mentioned there at all.

AND THESE ARE THE NAMES OF THE CHIEFS THAT CAME TO ESAU. At first³¹²Verses 15-19 here. Scripture enumerated Esau’s grandsons who were chieftains in that generation, and afterwards some of his descendants succeeded in attaining sovereignty. After that their kingdom ceased, and the Edomites once again appointed these chieftains as their head. And so it is said in the book of Chronicles:³¹³I, 1:51. And Hadad died. And the chiefs of Edom were: the chief of Timna. So did Rashi explain it here in his commentary on this verse.
And that which Scripture says here, according to their families, after their places, by their names, [and in Verse 43], after their habitations in the land of their possessions means that among the previous chiefs, [mentioned above in Verses 15-19], all the brothers who were the chiefs dwelled in one city, ruling one people, or their position was analogous to the princes of the tribes and the heads of families [in Israel]. But these latter ones were chiefs according to their families, meaning that each one was chief of all the families of Esau’s descendants, and in all of their dwelling places, for in that generation he alone was called “chief,” no other person being so called in all the land they possessed. Thus they were as kings in their countries, but they were not enthroned, and the glory of royalty was not bestowed upon them.
In the opinion of many commentators³¹⁴See Rashi on Verse 31. In his opinion, before there reigned any king (Verse 31) refers to Saul, king of Israel. Moses who wrote the Torah could therefore know it only by prophecy. this section was written as a prophecy. But this is not correct. Why should prophecy mention these kings, and until what point in time was Scripture to enumerate them and stop? Rather the correct interpretation is that all these ruled before the Torah was given in the days of Moses. Now we may say that they all ruled in one time, and then the explanation of after their places would be that each one ruled in his place, or else their rule lasted but a short time, as Scripture says, But the years of the wicked shall be shortened.³¹⁵Proverbs 10:27.