Isaiah 63:1-6 - Homiletics

The Idumaeans a type of God's enemies.

There was a time when Esau sought to slay his brother Jacob ( Genesis 27:41 ); and the same spirit of violence and hatred possessed the Edomite nation during its entire career. Edom strove to debar Israel from entrance into the Holy Land by refusing to give them a passage through her borders ( Numbers 20:14-21 ). She was always ready to join Israel's enemies, and sought perpetually to take Israel at a disadvantage ( 2 Kings 16:6 ; 2 Chronicles 20:10 , 2 Chronicles 20:22 ; 2 Chronicles 28:17 ; Ezekiel 25:12 ; Ezekiel 35:5 ; Amos 1:11 ; Obadiah 1:10 , etc.). When the Babylonian conquest came she rejoiced, and made a mock of Israel's distress ( Psalms 137:7 ). She was still hostile in the time of the Maccabees , and supported the Syrian monarchs in their endeavours to crush Jewish independence (1 Macc. 5:3; 6:31; 2 Macc. 5:15). Herod the Great, who sought to put our Lord to death in his infancy, was an Idumaean; and so, on the father's side, was Herod Antipas, who mocked him and set him at nought. The Idumaeans are well selected to represent God's enemies generally—

I. ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR PRIDE . Pride was the sin by which Satan and his evil angels lost heaven; and no sin is more hateful to God or more characteristic of his enemies. Of the Idumaeans it is said, "The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks … that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?" ( Obadiah 1:3 ); and again," Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thy heart" ( Jeremiah 49:16 ). "Pride was the root of Edom's sin," says a recent commentator on Obadiah—pride of an unnatural kind, since God had assigned to Edom a low estate. Now "a low estate, acquiesced in by the grace of God, is the parent of lowliness; when rebelled against, it generates a greater intensity of pride than greatness, because that pride is against nature itself and God's appointment. The pride of human greatness, sinful as it is, is allied to a natural nobility of character … The conceit of littleness has the hideousness of those monstrous combinations , the more hideous because unnatural, not a corruption only, but a distortion of nature".

II. ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR UNNATURAL HATRED . All hatred of one race towards another is hated by God, but the hatred of a kindred race is especially displeasing to him. It was one of the special reproaches against Ephraim that he vexed a brother, Judah. Now, Esau and Israel were not only brothers, but twin brothers. They ought to have been drawn closely together by this relationship, and to have supported each ether against the alien races of the neighbourhood. But the tie of blood was not felt. Edom had "a perpetual hatred of Israel" ( Ezekiel 35:5 ). They would gladly have conquered their brethren, and held them in subjection ( Ezekiel 35:10 ); but as this could not be, they rejoiced in their brethren's destruction ( Obadiah 1:12 ) and gazed delightedly on their sufferings ( Obadiah 1:13 ). "Unrelenting, deadly hatred against the whole people of Israel, and a longing for their extermination, were inveterate characteristics of Esau".

III. ON ACCOUNT OF THE ENVY IN WHICH THEIR HATE WAS ROOTED . Ezekiel, declaring God's intention to punish Edom: says, "As I live, saith the Lord God, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thy envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them" ( Ezekiel 35:11 ). The ground of all Edom's hatred of Israel was that jealousy and envy roused by the Divine preference which put the younger before the elder, and gave to Israel superior, to Esau inferior, blessings. Edom had much for which to be thankful—a good pasture country, a secure capital, commercial advantages, wisdom of a certain kind ( Jeremiah 49:7 ); but these things did not satisfy her. They were all rendered vain, and of no account, by the fact that Israel enjoyed more numerous and greater blessings. She could not forgive this superiority; and hence her hatred and rancour. Hence the joy with which she witnessed the walls breached, and Jerusalem taken by the Babylonians; hence the loud cries to which she gave utterance, of "Down with it, down with it [or, 'raze it, raze it' ], even to the ground" ( Psalms 137:7 ).

IV. ON ACCOUNT OF THE VIOLENCE AND CRUEL OUTRAGES TO WHICH THE HATRED LED . Edom "shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity" ( Ezekiel 35:5 ). When the Babylonians were besieging Jerusalem, they "stood in the crossway, to cut off those that did escape" ( Obadiah 1:14 ), shutting them up with the enemy, driving them back on their pursuers. Not only did they rejoice in Judah's destruction, and speak proudly in the day of her distress ( Obadiah 1:12 ), but they flew upon the spoil, entering into the gates with the conquerors and laying hands upon the substance of the conquered ( Obadiah 1:13 ). Such fugitives as escaped and settled among them they slew ( Joel 3:19 ). Such captives as they could induce the Philistines or the Phoenicians to sell to them they also put to death ( Amos 1:6 , Amos 1:9 , Amos 1:11 ). It was their earnest desire that Israel should be no more a nation, and they therefore made every effort to exterminate it. Next to extermination, they desired complete subjugation. Hence the support which they lent to the Syrians against the heroic Maccabee princes.

Idumaea's fate should be a warning to the enemies of God. Her reward returned upon her own head. As she had done, so was it done to her ( Obadiah 1:15 ). By the time of Malachi, Edom's mountains and heritage had been "laid waste for the jackals of the wilderness" ( Malachi 1:3 ). She was "impoverished;" her cities were thrown down; she strove to rebuild them, but was unable ( Malachi 1:4 ). A century later her territory, or great part of it, was occupied by the Nabathaeans, who made Petra their capital (Diod. Sic; 19:94-98). After suffering various defeats at the hands of the earlier Maccabee princes, the Edomites were finally conquered, and incorporated into the Jewish nation by John Hyrcanus. The last that we hear of them is in the Roman war, when a body of twenty thousand, admitted into Jerusalem by John of Giscala, filled the city with bloodshed, and ending by pillaging it. Thenceforth they disappear from history. The greater part perished in the terrible siege conducted by Titus. The remainder, confounded with the Jews, were sold into slavery. Idumaea became "a geographical expression."