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How exactly descriptive of this boasted republic is the impeachment of Edom by the same prophet! "The pride of thy heart hath deceived thee, thou whose habitation is high; that saith in thy heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord."
Nay Herod, as a son of Edom, was but proving that the Sceptre had departed from Judah; and the reign of Augustus was a time when darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people, for the Greeks and Romans had lost all the good that had been left in them, and were given up to wicked cruelty and foul self-indulgence; when one of their own heathen oracles was caused to announce to Augustus that the greatest foe of the Roman power should be a child born among the Hebrews.
There was a difference between the kings of Esau's seed and the kings of Jacob's seed. The Jewish people always produced their kings from their own midst, while the Edomites had to go to alien peoples to secure theirs. The first Edomite king was the Aramean Balaam, called Bela in his capacity as ruler of Edom.
Now, when the Dead Sea first began its independent career as a separate sheet of water on its own account, it no doubt occupied the whole bed of this imaginary engineers' lake spreading, if not from Dan to Beersheba, at any rate from Dan to Edom, or, in other words, along the whole Jordan Valley from the Sea of Galilee and even the Waters of Merom to the southern desert.
And when all the multitude of people saw that Aaron was dead, they wept and wailed on him thirty days in every tribe and family. After this the people went about the land of Edom, and began to wax weary, and grudged against our Lord and Moses, and said yet: Why hast thou led us out of the Land of Egypt for to slay us in this desert and wilderness?
It was about this time that Elijah and Elisha were prophets of the Lord, whose field of duties lay chiefly among the idolatrous people of the ten tribes. During the reign of Jehoram, Edom revolted from Judah, and succeeded in maintaining its independence, according to the predictions made to Esau, that his posterity, after serving Israel, should finally break their yoke.
Them also king David dedicated unto the LORD, with the silver and the gold that he brought from all these nations; from Edom, and from Moab, and from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines, and from Amalek. Moreover Abishai the son of Zeruiah slew of the Edomites in the valley of salt eighteen thousand. And he put garrisons in Edom; and all the Edomites became David's servants.
She may be the goddess Edom, or perhaps the solar divinity who was entitled  in Babylonian, and whose name enters into that of an Edomite king A-rammu, who is mentioned by Sennacherib. But, like Istar, a considerable number of the deities of Palestine were borrowed from Babylonia.
Revolts broke out in Edom and the north. Garrisons, indeed, were planted in Zobah, which secured the caravan road through Tadmor or Palmyra to the Euphrates; but Damascus was lost, and became in a few years a formidable adversary of Israel. The death of Solomon was the signal for a revolt in Palestine itself.
Then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee, pass through thy land: but the king of Edom would not hearken thereto. And in like manner they sent unto the king of Moab: but he would not consent: and Israel abode in Kadesh.
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