be.tred posse!!ded the Edomite ne.tion during its entire ce.reer. Edom strove to debe.r Israel from entrance into the Holy Land by refusing to give them e. passage through her borders (Numb. xx. 14-21). She was always ready to join Israel's enemies, and sought perpetually to te.ke Israel at o. disadvantage (2 Kings xvi. 6; 2 Chron. xx. 10, 22; 5xviii. 17; Ezek. xxv. 12; xxxv. 6; Amos i. 11; Obad. 10, etc.). When the Baby- loninn conquest co.me she rejoiced, and made a mock of Israel's distress (Ps. cxxxvii. 7). She was Rtill hostile in the time of the Maccabees, and supported the Syrian monarchs in their endeavours to crush Jewish independence (1 Mace. v. 3; vi. 31; 2 ]\face. v. 15). Herod the Great, who sought to put our Lord to death in his ini"ancy, was an Idumrean; and so, on the father's side, was Herod Anti pas, who mocked him and 8et him at nought. The Idumreans are well selected to represent God's enemies generally- L ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR PRIDE. Pride was the sin by which Satan and his evil angels lost heaven; and no sin is more hateful to God or more characteristic of his enemies. Of the Idummans it is said, "The pride of thine heart bath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks . . . that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?" (Obad. 3) ; and again," Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thy heart" (Jer. xlix. 16). "Pride was the root of EJom's sin,'' says a recent commentator on Obadiah-pride of an unnatural kind, since God had assigned to Edom a low estate. Now "a low estate, acquiesced in by the grace of God, is the parent of lowliness; when rebelled against, it generates a greater intensity of pride than greatness, because that pride is against nature itself and God's appointment. The pride of human greatness, sinful as it is, is allied to a nat.ural nobility of character.... The conceit of littleness has the hideousness of those monstrous combinations, the more hideous because unnatnral, not a corruption _only, but a distortion of nature" (Pusey, 'Minor Prophets,' pp. 234, 235). II. ON ACCOUNT OF TIIEIB UNNATURAL HATRED. All hatred of one race towards another is hated by God, but the hatred of a kindred race is especially displeasing to him. It was one of the special reproaches against Ephraim that he vexed a brother, Judah. Now, Esau and Israel were not only brothers, but twin brothers. They ought to have been drawn closely together by this relationship, and to have supported each other against the alien races of the neighbourhood. But the tie of blood was not felt. Edom had" a perpetual hatred of Israel" (Ezek. xxxv. 5). They would gladly have conquered their brethren, and held them in subjection (Ezek. xxx:v. 10); but as this could not be, they rejoiced in their brethren's destruction (Obad.12) and gazed delightedly on their sufferings (Obad. 13). "Unrelenting, deadly hatred against the whole people of Israel, and a longing for their extermination, were inveterate characteristics of Esau" (Pusey, •Minor Prophets,' p. 241). III. ON ACCOUNT OF THE ENVY IN WHICH TREIB HATE WAS BOOTED. Ezekiel, declaring God's intention to punish Edom, says, "As I live, saith the Lord God, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thy envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them" (xxxv. 11). The ground of all Edom's hatred of Israel was that jealousy and envy roused by the Divine preference which put the younger before the elder, and gave to Israel superior, to Esau inferior, blessi11gs. Edam had much for which to be thankful-a good pasture country, a. secure capital, commercial a,lvanta2;es, wisdom of a certain kind (Jer. xlix. 7); but these things did not satisfy her. They were all rendered vain, and of no account, by the fact that Israel enjoyed more numerous and greater blessings. She could not forgive this superiority; and hence her hatred and rancour. Hence the joy with which she witnessed the walls breached, and Jeru- salem taken by the Babylonians; hence the loud cries to which she gave utterance, of "Down with it, down with it [or, • raze it, raze it'], even to the ground" (Ps. c:nxvii. 7). IV. 0N ACCOUNT OF THE VlOY.FNOE AND CRUEL OUTRAGES 'l'O WHICH THE HATRED LED. Edam "shed the blood of t.he children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity" (Ezek. xxxv. 5). When the Babylonians were besieging Jeru- salem, they" stood iu the crossway, to cut off those that did escape" (Ohad. 14), shutting them up with the enemy, driving them back on their pursuers. Not only did thev rejoice in J udah's destruction, aud speak proudly in the day of her distress (Obad. 12), but they flew upon the spoil, entering into the gates with the conquerors and laying hands upon the substance Qf the con4uered (Obad. 13). Such fugitives 11s escaped and setUed 4-46 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISA.IA.H. [orr. txm. 1-19.
among them they 11lew ( Joel iii. 19). Such oaptive.q e,s they could induce the Philistines or the Phrenicians to sell to them they also put to dea.th (Amos i. 6, 9, 11). It WBB their earnest desire that Israel should be no more a nation, and they therefore ma.de every effort to exterminate it. Next to extermination, they desired complete subjugation. Hence the support which they lent to the Syrians against the heroic Maccabde princes. Id.umrea's fate shonld be a warning to the enemies of God. Her reward returned upon her o~ head. A.s she had done, so wa.s it done to her (Obad. 15). By the time of Malachi, Edom's mountains and heritage had been "laid waste for the jackals of the wilderness" (Mai. i. 3). She was "impoverished;" her cities were thrown down· she strove to rebuild the1;0, but was unable (Ma.I. i. 4-). A century later her territory, or great Il'.1rt of 1t, wa.s occupied by _the Na~athreans, who made Petra their ea.pita.I (Diod. Sic., x1x. 94-98). .After sufl'enng various defeats at the hands of the earlier Maccabee princes, the Edomites were finally conquered, a.nd incorporated into the Jewish nation by John Hyrcanus. The last that we hear of them is in the Roman wa.r, when a. body of twenty thousand, admitted into Jerusalem by John of Giscala, filled the city with bloodshed, and ending by pillaging it. Thenceforth they disappear from history: The greater part perished in the terrible siege conducted by Titus. The remainder, con- founded with the Jews, were sold into slavery. ldumrea became "a geographical expression. n