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Updated: June 3, 2025
He had, therefore, first, either to conquer or gain the friendship of the Nabatæans, a warlike race of Arabs, who held the north of Arabia; and then he might march by Petra, Mount Sinai, and the coast of the Red Sea, without being in want of water for his army. The Nabatæans were the tribe at an earlier time called Edomites.
It had been carved out in situ, the soft metal being fashioned with elaborate skill and long patience. Jannati Shahr seemed, on a larger scale and a vastly more magnificent plan, something like the hidden rock-city of Petra in the mountains of Edom a city wholly carved by the Edomites out of the solid granite, without a single stone having been laid in mortar.
"As the visitor now stands and contemplates the acclivities, and considers what it meant to charge such a foe so well fortified, if he be a Bible student, he will be reminded of the case of the Edomites. They were the direct descendants of Esau, and inhabited Mount Seir. This mount is an immense pile of rock in the southern part of Palestine.
But all these prayers and pleadings of Moses were without avail, for Edom's answer was in the form of a threat: "Ye depend upon your inheritance, upon 'the voice of Jacob' which God answers, and I too shall depend upon my inheritance, 'the hand and sword of Esau." Israel now had to give up their attempt to reach their land through Edom's territory, not, however, through fear, but because God had prohibited them from bringing war upon the Edomites, even before they had heard from the embassy that Edom had refused them the right of passage.
For their riches were more than that they might dwell together; and the land wherein they were strangers could not bear them because of their cattle. Thus dwelt Esau in mount Seir: Esau is Edom. And these are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites in mount Seir: These are the names of Esau's sons; Eliphaz the son of Adah the wife of Esau, Reuel the son of Bashemath the wife of Esau.
The Edomites, during the forty-eight years of the reign of Hadad, the successor of Baal Hamon, fared no better than the people of Kittim.
Esau, and his posterity the Edomites, were of a sanguinary disposition, and peculiarly hostile to Israel; Jacob supplanted his brother in the birthright; Esau was "a cunning hunter, a man of the field;" Jacob, a "a plain man, dwelling in tents."
He was on the whole a good and able prince, and gained great victories over the Edomites whom he attempted to reconquer. He punished also the murderers of his father, and spared their sons, according to the merciful provision of the laws of Moses. But he worshiped the gods of the Edomites, and was filled with vainglory from his successes over them.
But they lost that name when they carried it to the southern portion of Judæa, then called Idumæa; for when the Jews regained Idumæa, they called these Edomites of the desert Nebaoth or Nabatæans.
This book proceeds with the history of Isaac, which becomes very interesting to us, from the touching scene I have mentioned and, still more so, if we consider him as the type of our Saviour: it recounts his marriage with Rebecca the birth and history of his two sons, Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, and Esau, the father of the Edomites or Idumeans the exquisitively affecting story of Joseph and his brethren and of his transplanting the Israelites into Egypt, who there multiplied to a great nation.
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