The nation and land descended from ESAU — the rugged red-sandstone highlands south-east of the Dead Sea, also called SEIR ('hairy,' echoing Esau). The name Edom ('red') is minted from the red stew (25:30) and matches the red Nubian sandstone of the region (whose later capital, Petra, is carved into it). Its whole family tree — Esau's wives and sons, the clan-chiefs (alufim), the older Horite people they displaced, and eight kings who reigned 'before any king reigned over Israel' — fills Genesis 36. Edom and Israel are the archetypal quarreling brothers of the Bible: kin, yet perennial enemies — Edom refuses Israel passage in the wilderness (Numbers 20), and the prophets return to it again and again (Obadiah is entirely an oracle against Edom; Jeremiah 49; Isaiah 34). Herod the Great was an Idumean — a Hellenized Edomite — so the brother-rivalry runs right up to the Gospels.