Edom
Scripture first
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Esau settles in the hill country of Seir; Esau is Edom.
Edom held the high sandstone country of Seir, controlling the 's Highway trade route. The kinship of Jacob and Esau made every Edomite hostility a family wound.
Edom rejoiced at Jerusalem's fall in 586 BC and was judged for it. In later centuries Edomites moved into southern Judah, the region the New Testament calls Idumea, the homeland of Herod's family.
The nation of Esau's descendants in the mountains south-east of the Dead Sea, Israel's brother and rival.
- Edom, Seir
- Idumea (Greek and Roman period)
Edom's rise steeply from the Arabah and fall westward toward the Negev; the passes through them controlled trade between Arabia and the Mediterranean.
Its strongholds, including the rock city later famous as Petra, were nearly impregnable, which is the point of Obadiah's taunt about those who live in the clefts of the rock.
- Genesis 36:8-9 Esau settles in the hill country of Seir; Esau is Edom.
- Numbers 20:14-21 Edom refuses Israel passage on the march to Canaan
- Obadiah 1:10-14 Obadiah's oracle against Edom for gloating over Jerusalem's fall
- Psalm 137:7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem
What we know
Certain
- Scripture consistently places Edom in the mountains of Seir, south-east of the Dead Sea.
Probable
- The identification of Edomite territory with the sandstone highlands of southern Jordan is broadly accepted.
Disputed
- The precise western boundary of early Edom is debated.