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Mal_1:3-4
The Edomites were not immediately affected by the Chaldean operations in those lands. By a timely submission, they appear to have won the favor of Nebuchadnezzar; and they are named as among his willing auxiliaries in the invasion of Judah. They are represented as triumphing, with most fiendish malignity, over the ruin of their kinsmen, of whose desolated land they hoped to obtain a large portion for themselves. This behavior marked them out for Divine judgments, which were accordingly denounced by the prophets. Although these, in their final consummation, lay in the future; although the Edomites were not, like the Jews, carried into captivity; and although they succeeded in appropriating much of the southern parts of Judah, even unto Hebron—yet did not they escape the first-fruits of the doom that hung over them. The interval from the destruction of Jerusalem to the prophecy of Malachi is not less than 190 years, during which we possess little or no information concerning them; and we know not how the impoverishment and desolation which he states them to have sustained was brought about. Our own impression is, that they were less favored by the Persian monarchs than they had been by the Chaldean kings; and that, on some ground of displeasure, they had suffered much from the Persians in their expeditions against Egypt, with which country, whose border impinged upon their own, the Edomites had intimate relations. At the time Malachi wrote, the Egyptians had lately shaken off for a time the Persian yoke; and it was this, probably, which inspired the Edomites with the hope and design of restoring their ruined cities, and of repairing the losses they had sustained. To this the prophet refers; “I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.” The denunciations of the prophets, had, therefore, already been fulfilled in their primary signification; and with this evidence of later prophecy before us, did it stop here, we should be entitled to conclude that these anterior prophecies had been accomplished in their season, even if we now found the Edomites a flourishing people, and their cities standing in their strength. But now the last of the prophets comes forward to renew the prophecies that might seem to have lapsed by fulfillment, and gives them a final and ulterior signification, which was not to be frustrated by the present movement among the Edomites. “Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; this is with the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever;”—which indignation it is clear from the context, was to be manifested by throwing down all that might be rebuilt in repair of former desolations.
Now, much as there has been said and written of the prophecies respecting Edom, it appears to us that much force of illustration has been lost by neglecting to take into account the greatly later date of this prophecy to all the others, and the peculiar circumstances under which it was delivered; and to which we have, therefore, invited particular attention. Most remarkably have these words been fulfilled. The style of the remains existing in Petra, the metropolis of Edom, shows that they were framed at dates posterior to the time of this prophecy; and we know in fact historically, that it subsequently became a rich and flourishing city. The intention of the Edomites, as disclosed by the prophet, was therefore accomplished by themselves and their successors; but the Lord’s intention has also been accomplished. Of the Edomites themselves, not even a name remains; and their city has for ages remained broken and desolate. The very site, indeed, had long been uncertain, and its place was undetermined in the maps. But, as in the index which closes a book, the various events of centuries are crowded into a few pages; so in these latter days, events that used to be spread over centuries are crowded together into days and years, and the old world history seems tame to the history we live. In this wonderful age events come in “Multitudes, multitudes to the valley of decision;’ and old cities and nations—Egypt, Assyria, Edom; Thebes, Nineveh, Petra, are called forth from their tombs; and rattling their dry bones together, and shaking off the time-crust of many ages, they stand up in grim array to bear witness to God’s truth. Edom was called—and Petra answered to her name. There she stands beautiful in her coat of many colors; but empty, and void, and waste. But that we feared to repeat a thrice-told tale, with which all the readers of this volume must be familiar, we could speak largely of that marvellous city among “the clefts of the rock,” and the “height of the hills” in a deep fissure of the Seir mountains, with the tombs and habitations cut out in the enclosing cliffs of red, yellow, purple, azure, black and white stone, and enriched with facades cut in the living rock, and in a fantastic but not inelegant architecture, combining the styles of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
Singularly beautiful even in ruin, and with the freshness of youth still upon her brow, the utter desolation in which “the daughter of Edom” lies shut up amid the silence of her mountains, is most impressive, and even affecting. But all this was foreseen and foretold with great distinctness by the prophets; and these fearful denunciations, and their most exact fulfillment, furnish an invulnerable argument for the inspiration of the Scriptures; while the present state of the rich and beautiful region in which Edom dwelt, is a most awful monument of the Lord’s displeasure against idolatry and wickedness. Yet, “Think ye that they were sinners above all others because they suffered such things? I tell ye nay, but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.”
With the book containing this prediction concerning Edom, the roll of Old Testament prophecy closes. And it so closes with great and important significance, as the book is linked on to the New Testament by its last words, which, as interpreted by our Lord himself, clearly announce the mission of the Harbinger of Christ, with whose actual appearance the Gospel history opens. This perception of the relation which the prophecy of Malachi bears to the fulfillments of the New Testament, will be found to give to many of the prophet’s intimations a strong and pointed emphasis, which may be overlooked when this consideration is not borne in mind.