Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"These be the dukes of Edom" (Genesis 36:43) sounds like Edom had a European-style aristocracy with titled nobility.
'Duke' in Genesis 36 translates a Hebrew word for tribal chieftain, not a rank of European nobility.
Genesis 36:43, in every translation this tool compares.
Genesis 36 lists the descendants of Esau and closes with a roll call: "Duke Magdiel, duke Iram: these be the dukes of Edom." The Hebrew word behind it, alluph, means "head" or "chief": the leader of a clan or tribal division, roughly parallel to a "prince" (nasi) among the Israelites. The KJV translators reached for "duke" because it comes from the Latin dux, meaning simply "leader" or "captain," the same root sense the English feudal title later grew out of.
By 1611, though, "duke" already carried its aristocratic, hereditary-nobility sense in English court life, and that's the sense a modern reader supplies by default: picturing a European-style peerage system in Edom that the text never intends.
