Avith

Avith was the city of King Hadad son of Bedad, one of the eight Edomite kings listed in Genesis 36:31-39 as ruling "before any king reigned over the Israelites" (Genesis 36:35, 1 Chronicles 1:46). Hadad's claim to fame in the genealogy is that "he defeated Midian in the country of Moab" — a small clue that conflict between Edom and Midian was already underway in the patriarchal age, well before Gideon's famous victory over the Midianites in Israel's judges era. The location of Avith is unknown; it lay somewhere in the highlands of Edom south of the Dead Sea, possibly near modern Khirbet Ghuweitha or Khirbet el-Jiththeh in southern Jordan. The list of Edomite kings in Genesis 36 testifies that the descendants of Esau established formal kingship generations before Israel asked Samuel for a king.