And these are the children of Zibeon; both Ajah,—"Screamer" (Gesenius)—and Anah:—the father-in-law of Esau (Genesis 36:2)—this was that Anah that found the mules in the wilderness,—neither invented the procreation of mules (Aben Ezra, Kimchi, Luther, Calvin, Willet, Clarke, Ainsworth, &c.
), since מָעַא does not signify to invent, but to light upon or discover (Keil), and there were no horses at that time in those regions (Michaelis), and it is not said that Anah was feeding his father's horses and asses, but only asses (Rosenmüller); nor overcame the giants (Onkelos, Samaritan, Bochart),which would have required אימים (Genesis 14:5; Deuteronomy 2:11); nor found out salt water (Oleaster, Percrius), a useful herb (Mais), or Ἰαμεὶν as a proper name (LXX.
); but discovered the warm springs, the ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, יֵמִים, being now generally taken to mean aquce callidae (Vulgate, Dathius, Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Hengstenberg, Keil, Kalisch, Murphy), of which there were venous in the vicinity, as, e.
g; the springs of Callirrhoe in the Wady Zerka Maein, and those, in the Wady-el-Ahsa to the south-east of the Dead Sea, and those in the Wady Hamad between Kerek and the Dead Sea—as he fed (literally, in his feeding) the asses of Zibeon his father.
"The whirlpool of Karlsbad is said to have been discovered through a hound of Charles IV. which pursued a stag into a hot spring, and attracted the huntsmen to the spot by its howling" (Keil in loco; cf.
Tacitus, 'Hist,,' Genesis 5:3).