Genesis 25: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Abraham takes Keturah as a wife and has six more sons, whose descendants are listed. He gives everything he owns to Isaac, gives gifts to the sons of his concubines and sends them east, and dies at 175; Isaac and Ishmael bury him at Machpelah. The chapter then lists Ishmael's twelve sons and records his death, and turns to Isaac: Rebekah conceives after Isaac prays, the twins struggle inside her, and the LORD tells her that two nations are in her womb and the elder will serve the younger. Esau and Jacob are born, and Esau later swears away his birthright to Jacob and is given bread and lentil stew.

Claim by Claim

1. 25:1
   • Abraham took another wife.
   • The name of this wife was Keturah.
2. 25:2
   • Keturah bore Abraham a son named Zimran.
   • Keturah bore Abraham a son named Jokshan.
   • Keturah bore Abraham a son named Medan.
   • Keturah bore Abraham a son named Midian.
   • Keturah bore Abraham a son named Ishbak.
   • Keturah bore Abraham a son named Shuah.
3. 25:3
   • Jokshan fathered Sheba.
   • Jokshan fathered Dedan.
   • The sons of Dedan were the Asshurim, the Letushim, and the Leummim.
4. 25:4
   • The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah.
   • All these were the sons of Keturah.
5. 25:5
   • Abraham gave everything he had to Isaac.
6. 25:6
   • Abraham had concubines who bore him sons.
   • Abraham gave gifts to the sons of his concubines.
   • Abraham sent those sons away from his son Isaac.
   • Abraham sent them away while he was still alive.
   • Abraham sent them eastward, to the land of the east.
7. 25:7
   • The years of Abraham's life totaled one hundred seventy-five.
8. 25:8
   • Abraham breathed his last and died.
   • Abraham died at a good old age.
   • Abraham was old and satisfied with life.
   • Abraham was gathered to his people.
9. 25:9
   • Isaac and Ishmael, Abraham's sons, buried him.
   • They buried him in the cave of Machpelah.
   • The cave was in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite.
   • That field faces Mamre.
10. 25:10
    • Abraham had bought that field from the sons of Heth.
    • Abraham was buried there.
    • Sarah his wife was buried there.
11. 25:11
    • After Abraham's death, God blessed Isaac his son.
    • Isaac settled by Beer-lahai-roi.
12. 25:12
    • What follows is the account of the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's son.
    • Hagar the Egyptian bore Ishmael to Abraham.
    • Hagar was Sarah's maidservant.
13. 25:13
    • What follows are the names of Ishmael's sons in order of their birth.
    • Nebaioth was Ishmael's firstborn.
    • Kedar was a son of Ishmael.
    • Adbeel was a son of Ishmael.
    • Mibsam was a son of Ishmael.
14. 25:14
    • Mishma was a son of Ishmael.
    • Dumah was a son of Ishmael.
    • Massa was a son of Ishmael.
15. 25:15
    • Hadad was a son of Ishmael.
    • Tema was a son of Ishmael.
    • Jetur was a son of Ishmael.
    • Naphish was a son of Ishmael.
    • Kedemah was a son of Ishmael.
16. 25:16
    • These were the sons of Ishmael.
    • These were their names by their settlements and their encampments.
    • They were twelve princes according to their tribes.
17. 25:17
    • The years of Ishmael's life totaled one hundred thirty-seven.
    • Ishmael breathed his last and died.
    • Ishmael was gathered to his people.
18. 25:18
    • Ishmael's descendants dwelt from Havilah to Shur.
    • Shur lies before Egypt.
    • The region extends in the direction of Assyria.
    • He settled, or fell, in the presence of all his brothers; the text is ambiguous whether this means he lived opposite them or died there.
19. 25:19
    • What follows is the account of the descendants of Isaac, Abraham's son.
    • Abraham fathered Isaac.
20. 25:20
    • Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah as his wife.
    • Rebekah was the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean.
    • Bethuel was from Paddan-aram.
    • Rebekah was the sister of Laban the Aramean.
21. 25:21
    • Isaac pleaded with the LORD on behalf of his wife.
    • Isaac's wife was barren.
    • The LORD granted Isaac's plea.
    • Rebekah his wife conceived.
22. 25:22
    • The children struggled with each other inside Rebekah.
    • Rebekah said, 'If it is so, why am I this?', her words are ambiguous, meaning either why is this happening to her or why should she go on living.
    • Rebekah went to inquire of the LORD.
23. 25:23
    • The LORD said to her that two nations were in her womb.
    • The LORD said two peoples from within her would be separated.
    • The LORD said one people would be stronger than the other people.
    • The LORD said the elder would serve the younger.
24. 25:24
    • Rebekah's days to give birth were completed.
    • There were twins in her womb.
25. 25:25
    • The first one came out red.
    • He was all over like a hairy garment.
    • They called his name Esau.
26. 25:26
    • After that his brother came out.
    • The brother's hand was grasping Esau's heel.
    • His name was called Jacob.
    • Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.
27. 25:27
    • The boys grew up.
    • Esau became a man skilled in hunting.
    • Esau was a man of the field.
    • Jacob was a quiet and blameless man.
    • Jacob dwelt in tents.
28. 25:28
    • Isaac loved Esau.
    • Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for wild game.
    • Rebekah loved Jacob.
29. 25:29
    • Jacob boiled a stew.
    • Esau came in from the field.
    • Esau was exhausted.
30. 25:30
    • Esau said to Jacob, 'Let me gulp down some of that red stuff.'
    • Esau said he was exhausted.
    • For this reason his name was called Edom.
31. 25:31
    • Jacob said, 'Sell me your birthright today.'
32. 25:32
    • Esau said he was about to die.
    • Esau asked what good a birthright was to him.
33. 25:33
    • Jacob said, 'Swear to me today.'
    • Esau swore to Jacob.
    • Esau sold his birthright to Jacob.
34. 25:34
    • Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew.
    • Esau ate.
    • Esau drank.
    • Esau got up.
    • Esau went away.
    • Esau despised his birthright.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

25:1

Sarah has died (chapter 23) and Isaac is already married (chapter 24), so this marriage comes late in Abraham's life. Verse 6 calls Keturah and Hagar "concubines," which places her below Sarah in household rank.

25:2

These names function in Genesis as ancestors of peoples, not just individuals. Midian in particular is the ancestor of the Midianites, a trading and herding people of the northern Arabian desert who appear repeatedly later in the Bible.

25:3

The Hebrew forms behind "Asshurim, Letushim, Leummim" are plurals, the way a people or tribe is named rather than a single man, closer to "the Asshurites, the Letushites, the Leummites."

25:4

Ephah here is a man's name. Elsewhere in the Bible an ephah is a dry measure of grain, about twenty-two liters; the two words are unrelated.

25:5

Passing the entire estate to one son was a decision, not an automatic rule. The gifts to the other sons in the next verse work as a settlement that ends any later claim they might make.

25:6

A concubine was a secondary wife, recognized and living in the household but of lower legal standing than a full wife; her sons did not share the main inheritance. Giving them gifts and sending them away was the recognized way of settling a claim: they receive something, but the estate itself passes undivided to Isaac. "The east country" means the desert lands east and southeast of Canaan, toward Arabia.

25:7

A score is twenty, so "an hundred threescore and fifteen" is 100 plus 60 plus 15, which is 175.

25:8

"Gathered to his people" is a set phrase for dying and joining one's ancestors. It is distinct from being buried (the phrase is used of people who died far from the family tomb) and the Hebrew Bible says nothing more specific here about what that joining involves.

25:9

Machpelah is the burial cave near Hebron that Abraham bought in chapter 23. Burial in a family tomb, with kin laid in the same place across generations, was the normal expectation; being buried elsewhere was a misfortune. Note that Ishmael, sent away in chapter 21, returns for the burial.

25:10

"The sons of Heth" is the older way of saying the Hittites, the local people from whom Abraham bought the field. The purchase mattered because it was legally witnessed, making this the one piece of Canaan Abraham owned outright.

25:11

Lahai-roi means roughly "the Living One who sees me." It is the well in the southern desert where Hagar was met by the angel of the LORD in chapter 16 and where she gave God that name.

25:12

"Family record" translates a recurring Hebrew heading (toledot, "generations" in older versions) that Genesis uses to divide the book into sections. Each one closes off one branch of the family before the story follows the other: Ishmael's line is set out here so that the narrative can leave it and follow Isaac's.

25:13

Several of these names are known outside the Bible as North Arabian tribes and oasis settlements, Kedar, Dumah and Tema appear in Assyrian records and in later Arabian history. The list is a map of desert peoples as much as a family tree.

25:16

"Princes" here means tribal chiefs, heads of independent clans, not royalty ruling a kingdom. Twelve of them matches the twelve tribes that later descend from Jacob, and fulfills the promise made about Ishmael in Genesis 17:20. "Villages and camps" (KJV "towns and castles") distinguishes settled sites from the fortified encampments of people who moved with their herds.

25:18

Havilah and Shur mark the two ends of a stretch of desert running along the northeastern edge of Egypt into northern Arabia. The last clause is genuinely uncertain: the Hebrew verb means "fell," which can mean "settled, camped" (so: he settled alongside all his relatives) or "fell upon, fell in conflict" (so: he lived in hostility toward them). The wording deliberately echoes the prediction about Ishmael in Genesis 16:12.

25:19

"Begat" is old English for fathered. This heading marks a new section: from here on Genesis follows Isaac's household and then Jacob's.

25:20

KJV "Syrian" means Aramean, the people of Aram, in what is now southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. Paddan-aram is the region around Haran in upper Mesopotamia, where Abraham's brother's family stayed when Abraham moved to Canaan. Marrying within the extended family, rather than among the Canaanites, is the point being recorded.

25:21

"Intreated" means pleaded urgently, and "the LORD was intreated of him" is old passive English for the LORD granted his plea. Isaac was forty when he married and sixty when the twins were born, so this childlessness lasted twenty years.

25:22

Rebekah's question in Hebrew is clipped and unclear (literally something like "if so, why this me?") and translators differ over whether she is asking why she is suffering, or why she wanted this pregnancy at all. "To ask the LORD" means to seek an oracle: a direct answer to a specific question, normally obtained at a shrine or through someone recognized as speaking for God.

25:23

The last line is famously ambiguous in Hebrew. The words are "greater shall-serve lesser," with nothing to mark which is the subject, so it can be read either as "the older will serve the younger" or as "the younger, the older will serve him," i.e. the reverse. Either way it overturns the normal expectation that the firstborn ranks highest.

25:25

The names in this verse turn on sound. "Red" is admoni, which anticipates Edom, the nation descended from Esau; the word for hairy, se'ar, anticipates Seir, the territory Edom occupied. "Esau" itself is not explained here, but the Hebrew ear hears it alongside the word for hair.

25:26

Jacob (Ya'aqov) sounds like the Hebrew word for heel ('aqev), and also like a verb meaning to grab the heel, and so to trip up, overtake or supplant. The name is a pun that works as both description and prediction; Esau uses it against him in Genesis 27:36.

25:27

The Hebrew word rendered "quiet" (tam, KJV "plain") covers a range: settled, sound, whole, blameless. It is not simply a personality note: it is the sort of word used of a person of integrity, which sits in deliberate tension with what Jacob then does.

25:28

The Hebrew is blunter than it sounds: "Isaac loved Esau because game was in his mouth." The verse states plainly that each parent had a favorite, which drives the deception in chapter 27.

25:29

"Sod" is the old past tense of "seethe," meaning boiled, and "pottage" is a thick stew. "Faint" here means worn out to the edge of collapse.

25:30

Esau's word for "let me eat" is coarse, something like "let me gulp down", and he does not name the food, only "that red, red stuff." Edom means "red," and it becomes the name of both Esau and the nation descended from him, in the highlands southeast of the Dead Sea.

25:31

The birthright was the firstborn son's legal position: a double share of the inheritance compared with each other son, and headship of the family after the father's death. It was property in a real sense (it could be transferred, and the Bible elsewhere legislates about it) which is why it can be bargained over here.

25:32

"I am about to die" is most naturally read as exhaustion talking rather than literal starvation: he has just walked in from a day's hunting to his father's well-supplied camp. The point of the exchange is what he is willing to trade, not whether he was truly dying.

25:33

A sworn oath called on God as witness and was legally binding and irreversible; there was no ordinary way to undo one. Jacob demands it precisely because a casual verbal sale could later be disowned.

25:34

The closing sentence is the narrator's verdict, not part of the dialogue. The Hebrew verb means to treat as worth nothing, to hold in contempt, the string of quick verbs (ate, drank, got up, went) is the storyteller showing the reader how little the moment weighed with Esau.