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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadEzekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - Ezekiel 25:12 - 25:14
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III. The judgment of Edom (Eze_25:12-14).
Eze_25:12. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because of the doing of Edom in wreaking revenge on the house of Judah, and they have made themselves very guilty, and have dealt revengefully against them;
Eze_25:13. Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I also stretch out my hand upon Edom, and I cut off from it man and beast; and I will make it desolate from Teman (in the south) to Dedan (in the west); (The accents are manifestly wrong here, as the to Dedan is required after from Teman to complete the sense. Our translators, by following them, have confused the meaning of the passage.) they shall fall by the sword.
Eze_25:14. And I will lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people Israel; and they shall do in Edom according to my anger, and according to my fury; and they shall know my vengeance, saith the Lord Jehovah.
Here, as in the prophets generally, the specific sin charged against Edom is not that simply of hatred or opposition to the covenant-people, but of deep, brooding, implacable vengeance. It was the hereditary spirit of wickedness which descended from their father Esau, who could not forgive his brother Jacob for getting precedence in regard to the blessing, but nursed for many a year his deadly purpose of revenge. It yielded at last to the unexpected and extraordinary kindness of Jacob, accompanied by the blessing of him with whom Jacob wrestled to the dawning of the day; and the two brothers appear to have spent their latter days in peace and amity. When Israel, however, grew to be a great people under God’s fostering care in Egypt, and marched, with his mighty power on their side, to take possession of the land of Canaan, the old spirit revived in the posterity of Esau. They could not bear to see the younger branch rising to the pre-eminence in rank and glory, which they thought belonged of right to themselves. And thenceforth every opportunity was seized to wreak their vengeance on the children of Israel—for the most part only to draw down a deeper humiliation upon themselves, and never more than with a partial and temporary triumph—till the great period of the Babylonian conquest, when, with the fall of Jerusalem, they supposed that their object was for ever gained. So intense then was their spirit of malignity, that they are represented as not merely taking part with the Babylonians in the last catastrophe, but even as hounding on these ruthless conquerors to consummate the work of destruction, and watching along the byways to cut off the poor fugitives who fled from the presence of the enemy to seek an asylum in other lands, (Comp. especially Psalms 137; Amo_1:11; Oba_1:11)
Neither the vengeful spite of Edom, however, nor the might of the Babylonian conqueror, could defeat the purposes of God; and according to the Divine word, it proved that though Israel was sore broken and depressed by these calamities, he was not destroyed. Edom’s malicious joy was but of short continuance; for he had the mortification of seeing his old enemy return to occupy the former habitation, and from comparatively small beginnings rise again to the position of a formidable power. The children of Edom had meanwhile been moving northwards (having been themselves gradually dispossessed in the south by the Nabathseans), and occupied the territory of Judah as far as Hebron. But this greater proximity to the seed of Israel, and partial encroachment on their possessions, only paved the way for their utter extinction as a nation; for after many hostile encounters between the two races, the Edomites were finally subdued by John Hyrcanus, who compelled them to be circumcised, that they might be incorporated with the Jewish people. The amalgamation of course could only take place gradually; but the circumstance of the Herodian family, who were of Idumean origin, reigning as Jews over the entire region occupied by the two races, is abundant proof that it had been substantially effected about the commencement of the Christian era. From that time they ceased to be known as a distinct people, and shared partly in the fortunes of the Jews and partly in those of the neighbouring Arab population.
In this external subjection of Edom to the power and dominion of Israel, there was a certain measure of fulfilment given to the word: “I lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people;” a word which clearly pointed to the original promise, “The older shall serve the younger,” and virtually declared that still God’s purpose should stand Israel is the divinely constituted governor of Edom. But it is only in a certain limited and imperfect measure that we see in such external victories and forced compliances the fulfilment of this and similar predictions. These were but the shadow and symbol of what should be accomplished, when in Israel the characteristic of the “my people” came to be fully realized—when they rose, in Christ and the New Testament Church, to be the head of all authority and power and dominion in the world. Viewed in respect to that elevated position, all Edomite rivalry and spite, all carnal opposition and counter-dominion, is doomed to give way, for, in Christ, Israel is governor among the nations; all must serve him, and the nation which does not serve him must perish. So that there is what may be called a twofold revenge. There is first the noble revenge, of which Jacob’s victory over Esau, by means of prayer and personal kindness, was the type—the revenge that melts enmity into love, and overcomes evil with good; or, according to the process described by Obadiah, “deliverance arising first on Mount Zion,” and then “saviours coming up there to judge the mount of Esau,” making Esau’s offspring partakers in Jacob’s blessing, whereby both alike became members of that kingdom which is the Lord’s (Oba_1:17, Oba_1:21). But in so far as this blessed result fails, in so far as Edom still retains the old hatred, and refuses to bow the neck to the yoke of Jesus, then there inevitably comes the vengeance of deserved and final destruction—a vengeance executed no longer in human passion or for selfish aggrandizement, but, as here expressed, in full accordance with the Lord’s mind and purpose, “according to his anger and fury.”
This mode of understanding the prophecy satisfies to the full all its requirements, for on both sides it brings the matter into connection with the perfect adjustments of God’s kingdom in Christ; but we are at a loss to see how it can otherwise meet with any adequate fulfilment. For since it speaks of the Edomites as a people, and these have long since ceased to be a people, the work of complete and perfect retribution it announces must either have taken effect in the manner now described, or it never can be accomplished. The people being gone, no changes upon the land they once occupied can satisfy the conditions of the prophecy.