Bashemath

Bashemath (UPDV: Basemath) is named in Genesis as a wife of Esau. The name surfaces in two distinct contexts within Esau's marriage record — first as a Hittite woman taken when Esau was forty, and again in the Edomite genealogy as Ishmael's daughter and the mother of Reuel. Every Genesis occurrence is grouped under one umbrella, and the verses themselves use the same name for what the text presents as two different women.

The Hittite Marriage at Forty

Esau's first introduction of Bashemath comes with the notice of his foreign marriages: "And when Esau was forty years old he took as wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite" (Gen 26:34). The verse pairs her with Judith and identifies both fathers as Hittites, locating Esau's household firmly among the Canaanite peoples his parents wished to avoid for his line.

The Edomite Wife-List

When Genesis turns to "the generations of Esau (the same is Edom)" (Gen 36:1), the wife-list is restated, and a Basemath appears again — this time identified by a different lineage: "and Basemath Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nebaioth" (Gen 36:3). She stands beside Adah the daughter of Elon and Oholibamah the daughter of Anah as one of the three matriarchs of the Edomite clans. The chapter does not reconcile this Basemath with the Hittite Basemath of Gen 26:34; it simply uses the name a second time for Ishmael's daughter.

Mother of Reuel

In the family of Esau, Bashemath is remembered as the mother of one son: "And Adah bore to Esau Eliphaz; and Basemath bore Reuel" (Gen 36:4). The genealogy then repeats this naming when it lists Esau's sons by mother — "Eliphaz the son of Adah the wife of Esau, Reuel the son of Basemath the wife of Esau" (Gen 36:10) — fixing her place in the Edomite tribal map through Reuel.

Grandmother of the Reuelite Chiefs

Reuel's sons are tallied under Bashemath's name, so that her line becomes one of the founding branches of Edom: "And these are the sons of Reuel: Nahath, and Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah: these were the sons of Basemath, Esau's wife" (Gen 36:13). The chiefs' list a few verses later closes the same branch with the same attribution: "these are the chiefs who came of Reuel in the land of Edom; these are the sons of Basemath, Esau's wife" (Gen 36:17). Through Reuel and his four sons, Bashemath stands at the head of four of the chiefs of Edom.