Magdiel: A Chief of Edom Named Twice and Never Again

A name from Edom, and almost nothing else

Magdiel (מַגְדִּיאֵל) is an Edomite who lived in the era of the patriarchs, an era placed at around 1996 BC to 1635 BC on Ussher's chronology (1650). He is listed among the chiefs of Edom. That is the whole of it. Everything Scripture records about him fits inside two verses, Genesis 36:43 and 1 Chronicles 1:54, and the two verses say nearly the same thing. There is no scene, no journey, no word from his mouth, no act of obedience or rebellion attached to his name. He is a name in a list, twice.

For an experienced reader this is worth slowing down over rather than skipping. The Bible is not only stories. A great deal of it is registry: names set down, counted, kept. Magdiel belongs to that part of the text, and the honest thing is to read him there rather than to invent a biography for him.

The two verses

Genesis 36:43 closes a list this way: "chief Magdiel, and chief Iram. These are the chiefs of Edom, according to their habitations in the land of their possession. This is Esau, the father of the Edomites."

1 Chronicles 1:54 closes a list this way: "chief Magdiel, and chief Iram. These are the chiefs of Edom."

Magdiel stands second from last in both, with chief Iram after him. He is given a title, chief, and a people, Edom. The Genesis form of the list adds two things the Chronicles form does not: that these chiefs are named "according to their habitations in the land of their possession," and the summary line, "This is Esau, the father of the Edomites" (Genesis 36:43). So Magdiel's name is tied, by the verse that carries it, to land held and to a line that runs back to Esau.

That is the only context these verses give him. He is not said to have ruled, fought, built, or prayed. He is said to be a chief, and where his chieftaincy lay is summed up in a phrase about habitations and possession (Genesis 36:43).

A list, not a scene

It is worth naming the kind of mention this is, because naming it protects us from filling the silence. Both of Magdiel's appearances are list entries at the end of a roll of chiefs. Neither is a narrative. Nothing happens in Genesis 36:43 or in 1 Chronicles 1:54 except the closing of a catalogue and, in Genesis, the sealing of it with the name of Esau.

The repetition itself is the one observable fact worth weighing. A list written once in Genesis is written again in 1 Chronicles, and Magdiel is in both, in the same place, with the same neighbour beside him. Whatever else we cannot say, we can say that the name survived the copying, the centuries and the second telling. Someone thought it mattered that these chiefs be counted, and counted again, down to the second to last name.

No failure is recorded, and no virtue either

Where Scripture reports a person's sins, an honest study must report them. Here there is nothing to report in either direction. Magdiel is charged with no wrong in Genesis 36:43 or 1 Chronicles 1:54, and he is praised for nothing. He is not held up as an example and not set up as a warning. Anyone who tells you what sort of man Magdiel was is telling you something the Bible does not.

It would be easy to borrow a character for him from what is said elsewhere about Edom or about chiefs in general, and to dress the two verses in a story. That would be a lie about the text. The two verses are bare, and they should be left bare.

What we do not know

Scripture does not name his parents. No children of his are named. No wife, no city, no dates of birth or death, no length of rule. His relation to the other chiefs in the list is not spelled out beyond the fact that they are grouped together as "the chiefs of Edom" (1 Chronicles 1:54). Whether he was early or late within the era is not stated. Whether "chief" here describes a clan head, a territorial ruler or something else, the two verses do not define.

The silence covers almost everything a reader would want to ask. The one thing that is not silent is that his name was written down and kept.

A name the Scriptures did not lose

No New Testament passage names Magdiel, so this study draws no line beyond the two verses that hold him. To reach further would mean going past what the text gives, and a man this small in the record deserves not to be inflated.

What remains is a man out of Edom, called chief, set among habitations and a land of possession (Genesis 36:43), whose only monument in the Bible is his name, written twice. Many lives leave less. Genesis and 1 Chronicles both saw fit that Magdiel be counted, and the counting is the record.