Anah, Who Found the Hot Springs in the Wilderness

A man of Edom among the patriarchs

Anah belongs to the age of the patriarchs, an Edomite whose name survives in the genealogical records of Genesis and 1 Chronicles. On the era placed on Ussher's chronology (1650), his lifetime falls within the span around 1996 BC to 1635 BC. He is named ten times in Scripture across two books, seven times in Genesis and three in 1 Chronicles, and never once in a story. His whole presence in the Bible is a name on a list, with one single sentence of narrative detail attached to it.

Every mention is a list

It is worth saying plainly what kind of mentions these are, because an honest reading will not make more of them than they are. Anah appears in registers of descent: the sons of Zibeon, the children of Anah, the wives of Esau, the chiefs of Edom. There is no scene, no spoken word, no decision recorded. He is cited at Genesis 36:2, 36:14, 36:18, 36:20, 36:24, 36:25 and 36:29, and again at 1 Chronicles 1:38 and 1:40-41. The reader who comes looking for an episode will not find one. What the reader finds instead is a man located precisely in a family and in a land.

The hot springs and his father's donkeys

One detail breaks the rhythm of the list, and the compiler of Genesis evidently thought it worth preserving: "These are the children of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah. This is Anah who found the hot springs in the wilderness, as he fed the donkeys of Zibeon his father. These are the children of Anah: Dishon and Oholibamah, the daughter of Anah" (Genesis 36:24-25).

So we are given a working son in a dry place, out with his father's animals, and a discovery made in the course of ordinary labour. The text does not call it a miracle, nor does it praise him for it. It simply records that it happened and that he was the one it happened to. In a chapter otherwise filled with names, that one line is the only glimpse of Anah actually doing anything, and what he is doing is feeding donkeys. Scripture remembers the find; it does not tell us what came of it.

The father of Esau's wife

Anah's wider significance in Genesis 36 is through his daughter. "Esau took his wives from the daughters of Canaan: Adah the daughter of Elon, the Hittite; and Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon, the Hivite" (Genesis 36:2). Through her, Anah's line runs into Esau's: "These were the sons of Oholibamah, the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon, Esau's wife: she bore to Esau Jeush, Jalam, and Korah" (Genesis 36:14). Those three sons are then listed as chiefs: "These are the sons of Oholibamah, Esau's wife: chief Jeush, chief Jalam, chief Korah. These are the chiefs who came of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, Esau's wife" (Genesis 36:18). His son Dishon also fathers a line of his own, named at 1 Chronicles 1:41. A man who feeds donkeys becomes, in the record, the grandfather of chiefs.

Anah named twice over

The Chronicler's register sets two statements side by side that the quoted text does not reconcile. "The sons of Seir: Lotan, Shobal, Zibeon, Anah, Dishon, Ezer, and Dishan" (1 Chronicles 1:38). Then, a few verses later: "The sons of Shobal: Alian, Manahath, Ebal, Shephi, and Onam. The sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah. The son of Anah: Dishon. The sons of Dishon: Hamran, Eshban, Ithran, and Cheran" (1 Chronicles 1:40-41). An Anah stands in one list beside Zibeon and in the next as the son of Zibeon. Genesis 36:20 and 36:29 belong to the same cluster of registers. The text as given does not explain the overlap, and it would be dishonest to smooth it into a tidy answer. The names stand as they stand.

What we are not told

We are told nothing of Anah's character. No sin is recorded against him and no act of faith is credited to him. We do not know when he was born or when he died, what he believed, or how he responded to anything God did. His mother is not named. The record of his verses is clear on this point: no scene is told about this person, and every mention is a list, a genealogy or a passing note.

No New Testament passage takes up his name, and so no line can be drawn from him into the later Scriptures here. Nothing may be supplied where the text is silent. He remains what Genesis and 1 Chronicles make him: a son of Zibeon, the father of Dishon and of Oholibamah, a man out in the wilderness with his father's donkeys, remembered in one sentence for the hot springs he found.

Why the line was kept

There is something worth sitting with in a verse like Genesis 36:24. The register could have passed straight from Aiah to Dishon without a pause. Instead it stops to say where Anah was and what he was doing when the springs turned up. Scripture does not promise that every faithful day of work will be written down, and it draws no moral from this one. It simply keeps the memory of a man at his ordinary task, and lets the name stand among the chiefs and the lists of Edom.