- verses
- 2
- first named
- Genesis 36:23
- last named
- 1 Chronicles 1:40
- period
- the Patriarchs
- tribe
- Edom
Description
Who was Ebal?
Ebal is mentioned in the genealogies of Esau's family in Gen.36.23 and 1Ch.1.40. He is listed as one of the sons of Shobal, who was a descendant of Seir the Horite.
The Horites were the original inhabitants of Mount Seir, the region south of the Dead Sea, before Esau's descendants settled there (Deu.2.12). Seir the Horite, Ebal's ancestor, is mentioned as one of the chiefs of the Horites (Gen.36.20-21).
The inclusion of Ebal and other Horite names in Esau's genealogy suggests that there was intermarriage between Esau's descendants and the Horites. This intermingling of the two groups is further evidenced by the fact that Esau's grandson, Zepho, is also named as a descendant of Seir the Horite (Gen.36.11, 15).
Apart from being listed in these genealogies, no further information is provided about Ebal or his specific role in the biblical narrative. His mention serves to trace the origins and relationships of the people living in the region of Edom during the time of the patriarchs.
It is worth noting that there is another Ebal mentioned in the Bible, which is a mountain in the land of Canaan (Deu.11.29; 27.4, 13). However, this mountain is not related to the Ebal mentioned in the genealogies of Esau's family.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Child of
Sibling of
Places
Where this happens
A person is placed by the events they take part in, and an event has to clear three things to place them: it must say where it happened, that place must be one the gazetteer can put a coordinate on, and the verse must report it rather than foretell, command or ask it. Nothing anchored here clears all three. Where the text names a setting no gazetteer surveys — a vineyard, a palace, a plot of ground — it is left off rather than guessed at; where a place is named only in a prophecy, the map does not draw what was said to be coming as though it had happened; and a place reached only through a relation is not inherited, because standing beside somebody is not being somewhere.
No verse Atlas has read as a report puts this person anywhere.
Not read yet
The pattern
Where Ebal is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
2 verses across 2 of 66 books; 64 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (1) and 1 Chronicles (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 2, across 2 books.
Genesis1 verse
1 Chronicles1 verse
Onward
Where this page goes
Not the direct relations above — these are one hop further out, ranked so that a rare shared connection outweighs a common one. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Sources