The shortest way to reach the fords of Jordan would have been to pass through the mountain defiles of the country of Edom. This would, however, be impossible if the inhabitants offered resistance, and a request was sent to the king of Edom, on the grounds of ancient brotherhood, and of the Divine call to proceed to Canaan. Moses proposed to go by “the king's way” (probably the Wady Ghuweir) without trespassing, and paying even for the water which the host might require.
1. The country occupied by Edom extended from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Akabah and comprised what is now known as the Wady El-Arabah. Edom, at this time a beautiful and extremely fertile district, was held by a warlike race well able to protect the country from invasion. The Israelites evidently wanted to enter Edom at Petra, and to make their way across the Arabah and by one of its eastern valleys leading to the present pilgrim route from Damascus. An embassy was accordingly sent to the king of Edom “informing him how God had delivered his brother Israel” from Egypt, and asking him for permission to pass through his land. “We will not,” so ran the request of the Israelites, “pass through field or through vineyard, neither will we drink of the water of the wells; we will go along the king's highway, we will not turn aside to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed thy border.”
The King's highway was the public road constructed at the cost of the State for the King and his armies to use, and is said to be the same as the old broad military roads still found here and there in the East, and known as the “Sultan” or “Emperor road.”1 [Note: S. Singer.]
2. The request was refused. Not only so, but the king of Edom assembled so formidable an army to resist any attempt to cross his territory that the only way open to Israel was to turn southward to the Gulf of Akabah, and from thence to reach their destination by the eastern border of Edom.
The world has all along been refusing to let Christ through. It has never had room for Him within the inn; it has relegated Him to the manger. It wants Him to be kept apart. It is willing to visit Him occasionally in the manger-even, at times, to bring a little gold and frankincense. But it does not wish Him to become a force in its own affairs. Why so; what is it afraid of? The same thing which Edom feared. Edom was afraid that the hordes of Israel would tear up her cultivated fields and destroy her national produce. The world fears that Christ will tear up human instincts and make men unnatural. The world is wrong; we are never so natural as when we are Christians. What kills naturalness is self-consciousness; it makes us either too confident or too shy. When I am too confident I am thinking about myself; when I am too shy I am equally thinking about myself. In both cases the mirror of myself is the prominent thing. What will break the mirror? A larger environment. Why are travelled people so nice? It is because they are so natural. And why are they so natural? It is because their eyes have rested on a wider sphere. They have forgot their own greatness; they have forgot their own humility; they have forgot to think about themselves at all-they have smashed their mirror.
