DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4643#0003
IDUMEA.
nnHE illustration of prophecy gives a new and powerful interest to all ancient countries connected with
the Scriptures. And, with the exception of the Holy Land, there is, perhaps, no portion of the
East which supplies a more striking proof of the truth of prophecy than Idumea. If there ever was a
region where the skill of man exerted all its powers to confer a character of indestructibility on the
labours of man it was that spot on which stands Petra. The City has not fallen, like Tyre and Babylon,
into dust, and left its dwellers houseless. Its proudest portion remains in its original strength and size,
almost in all its original grace and beauty, but the population have perished. The noble edifices which
once stood in the midst of a flood of wealth, and were the creation of superabundant wealth, are there
still, but the tide has ebbed away from their feet for ever. Human arts, so long and so richly lavished
on those magnificent piles, have fled the soil; and through roads, once conveying the commerce alike of
India and Italy to the storehouses of this superb city, no foot now passes but that of the Arab savage,
or of the traveller hastening along, and regarding every man whom he meets as a robber and a homicide.
The fall of Edom had been pronounced by the Jewish prophets, while it was scarcely more than
acquiring the shape of a state. As the restless enemy of Israel, it was the subject of Divine denunciation
throughout the whole course of prophecy. Its punishments were successively proclaimed by Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and Malachi. By Isaiah it seems to have been taken as the emblem of
the whole heathen world, and to have thus been loaded with accumulated malediction. The cruelty
and corruption, the reckless vanity and furious arrogance of the national temperament, were divinely
sentenced, and the general ruin was marked as irretrievable.
"Also Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss
at all the plagues thereof. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbour cities thereof,
saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it."1 "Thus saith the Lord
God, I will stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it; and I will
make it desolate from Teman."2
" The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee; thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks, whose
habitation is high. Shall I not destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the Mount of
Esau ? The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions, but there shall not be any remaining of the
house of Esau."3
Malachi, in closing the prophetic volume, fixes a remarkable and final interdict on the recovery
of the nation: " I laid the mountains of Esau and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished; but we will return and build the desolate places; thus
saith the Lord of Hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border
of wickedness."4
This weight of Divine wrath seems to have been especially heaped on Idumea (Edom) in consequence
of its peculiar hostility to the chosen people. The territory had been in the possession of Esau, and his
immediate descendants, who had driven out the Horites.5 In the march of the people under Moses, when
they demanded leave to pass along the chief road of the country, leading directly to Palestine, the Edomites
fiercely refused, and the Israelites, who then were not commissioned to make war upon this prejudiced and
inhospitable race, turned aside, and retracing their steps, were forced to make the circuit of the frontier.
1 Jeremiah xlix. 17. 2 Ezekiel xxv. 13. s Obadiah. 4 Malachi i. 3, 4. s Genesis xxxvi. 6.
nnHE illustration of prophecy gives a new and powerful interest to all ancient countries connected with
the Scriptures. And, with the exception of the Holy Land, there is, perhaps, no portion of the
East which supplies a more striking proof of the truth of prophecy than Idumea. If there ever was a
region where the skill of man exerted all its powers to confer a character of indestructibility on the
labours of man it was that spot on which stands Petra. The City has not fallen, like Tyre and Babylon,
into dust, and left its dwellers houseless. Its proudest portion remains in its original strength and size,
almost in all its original grace and beauty, but the population have perished. The noble edifices which
once stood in the midst of a flood of wealth, and were the creation of superabundant wealth, are there
still, but the tide has ebbed away from their feet for ever. Human arts, so long and so richly lavished
on those magnificent piles, have fled the soil; and through roads, once conveying the commerce alike of
India and Italy to the storehouses of this superb city, no foot now passes but that of the Arab savage,
or of the traveller hastening along, and regarding every man whom he meets as a robber and a homicide.
The fall of Edom had been pronounced by the Jewish prophets, while it was scarcely more than
acquiring the shape of a state. As the restless enemy of Israel, it was the subject of Divine denunciation
throughout the whole course of prophecy. Its punishments were successively proclaimed by Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and Malachi. By Isaiah it seems to have been taken as the emblem of
the whole heathen world, and to have thus been loaded with accumulated malediction. The cruelty
and corruption, the reckless vanity and furious arrogance of the national temperament, were divinely
sentenced, and the general ruin was marked as irretrievable.
"Also Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss
at all the plagues thereof. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbour cities thereof,
saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it."1 "Thus saith the Lord
God, I will stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it; and I will
make it desolate from Teman."2
" The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee; thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks, whose
habitation is high. Shall I not destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the Mount of
Esau ? The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions, but there shall not be any remaining of the
house of Esau."3
Malachi, in closing the prophetic volume, fixes a remarkable and final interdict on the recovery
of the nation: " I laid the mountains of Esau and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished; but we will return and build the desolate places; thus
saith the Lord of Hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border
of wickedness."4
This weight of Divine wrath seems to have been especially heaped on Idumea (Edom) in consequence
of its peculiar hostility to the chosen people. The territory had been in the possession of Esau, and his
immediate descendants, who had driven out the Horites.5 In the march of the people under Moses, when
they demanded leave to pass along the chief road of the country, leading directly to Palestine, the Edomites
fiercely refused, and the Israelites, who then were not commissioned to make war upon this prejudiced and
inhospitable race, turned aside, and retracing their steps, were forced to make the circuit of the frontier.
1 Jeremiah xlix. 17. 2 Ezekiel xxv. 13. s Obadiah. 4 Malachi i. 3, 4. s Genesis xxxvi. 6.