Color Of Mind Why The Origins Of The Achievement Gap

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Color Of Mind Why The Origins Of The
Achievement Gap Matter For Justice

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 Color Of Mind Why The
Origins Of The
Achievement Gap Matter
For Justice

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.
 The report of it all fills the poet with trembling (ver. 16 returns
upon ver. 26), and although his language is too obscure to permit us
to follow with certainty the course of his feeling, he appears to await
in confidence the issue of Israel’s present troubles. His argument
seems to be, that such a God may be trusted still, in face of
approaching invasion (ver. 16).
The next verse, however, does not express the experience of
trouble from human foes; but figuring the extreme affliction of
drought, barrenness and poverty, the poet speaking in the name of
Israel declares that, in spite of them, he will still rejoice in the God of
their salvation (ver. 17). So sudden is this change from human foes
to natural plagues, that some scholars have here felt a passage to
another poem describing a different situation. But the last lines with
their confidence in the God of salvation, a term always used of
deliverance from enemies, and the boast, borrowed from the
Eighteenth Psalm, He maketh my feet like to hinds’ feet, and gives
me to march on my heights, reflect the same circumstances as the
bulk of the Psalm, and offer no grounds to doubt the unity of the
whole.[421]

PSALM[422] OF HABAKKUK THE PROPHET.

LORD, I have heard the report of Thee;
I stand in awe![423]
LORD, revive Thy work in the midst of the years,
In the midst of the years make Thee known;[424]
In turmoil[425] remember mercy!

God comes from Teman,[426]

The Holy from Mount Paran.[427]
He covers the heavens with His glory,
And filled with His praise is the earth.
The flash is like lightning;
He has rays from each hand of Him,
Therein[428] is the ambush of His might.

Pestilence travels before Him,

The plague-fire breaks forth at His feet.
He stands and earth shakes,[429]
He looks and drives nations asunder;
And the ancient mountains are cloven,
The hills everlasting sink down.
These be His ways from of old.[430]

Under trouble I see the tents of Kûshān,[431]

The curtains of Midian’s land are quivering.
Is it with hills[432] Jehovah is wroth?
Is Thine anger with rivers?
Or against the sea is Thy wrath,
That Thou ridest it with horses,
Thy chariots of victory?
Thy bow is stripped bare;[433]
Thy bow is stripped bare;[433]
Thou gluttest (?) Thy shafts.[434]
Into rivers Thou cleavest the earth;[435]
Mountains see Thee and writhe;
The rainstorm sweeps on:[436]
The Deep utters his voice,
He lifts up his roar upon high.[437]
Sun and moon stand still in their dwelling,
At the flash of Thy shafts as they speed,
At the sheen of the lightning, Thy lance.
In wrath Thou stridest the earth,
In anger Thou threshest the nations!
Thou art forth to the help of Thy people,
To save Thine anointed.[438]
Thou hast shattered the head from the house of
the wicked,
Laying bare from ...[439] to the neck.
Thou hast pierced with Thy spears the head of
his princes.[440]
They stormed forth to crush me;
Their triumph was as to devour the poor in
secret.[441]
Thou hast marched on the sea with Thy horses;
Foamed[442] the great waters.

I have heard, and my heart[443] shakes;

At the sound my lips tremble,[444]
Rottenness enters my bones,[445]
My steps shake under me.[446]
I will ...[447] for the day of trouble
 y
That pours in on the people.[448]

Though the fig-tree do not blossom,[449]

And no fruit be on the vines,
Fail the produce of the olive,
And the fields yield no meat,
Cut off[450] be the flock from the fold,
And no cattle in the stalls,
Yet in the LORD will I exult,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
Jehovah, the Lord, is my might;
He hath made my feet like the hinds’,
And on my heights He gives me to march.

This Psalm, whose musical signs prove it to have been employed

in the liturgy of the Jewish Temple, has also largely entered into the
use of the Christian Church. The vivid style, the sweep of vision, the
exultation in the extreme of adversity with which it closes, have
made it a frequent theme of preachers and of poets. St. Augustine’s
exposition of the Septuagint version spiritualises almost every clause
into a description of the first and second advents of Christ.[451]
Calvin’s more sober and accurate learning interpreted it of God’s
guidance of Israel from the time of the Egyptian plagues to the days
of Joshua and Gideon, and made it enforce the lesson that He who
so wonderfully delivered His people in their youth will not forsake
them in the midway of their career.[452] The closing verses have
been torn from the rest to form the essence of a large number of
hymns in many languages.
For ourselves it is perhaps most useful to fasten upon the poet’s
description of his own position in the midst of the years, and like him
to take heart, amid our very similar circumstances, from the glorious
story of God’s ancient revelation, in the faith that He is still the same
in might and in purpose of grace to His people. We, too, live among
the nameless years. We feel them about us, undistinguished by the
manifest workings of God, slow and petty, or, at the most, full of
inarticulate turmoil. At this very moment we suffer from the
frustration of a great cause, on which believing men had set their
hearts as God’s cause; Christendom has received from the infidel no
greater reverse since the days of the Crusades. Or, lifting our eyes to
a larger horizon, we are tempted to see about us a wide, flat waste
of years. It is nearly nineteen centuries since the great revelation of
God in Christ, the redemption of mankind, and all the wonders of
the Early Church. We are far, far away from that, and unstirred by
the expectation of any crisis in the near future. We stand in the
midst of the years, equally distant from beginning and from end. It
is the situation which Jesus Himself likened to the long double watch
in the middle of the night—if he come in the second watch or in the
third watch—against whose dulness He warned His disciples. How
much need is there at such a time to recall, like this poet, what God
has done—how often He has shaken the world and overturned the
nations, for the sake of His people and the Divine causes they
represent. His ways are everlasting. As He then worked, so He will
work now for the same ends of redemption. Our prayer for a revival
of His work will be answered before it is spoken.
It is probable that much of our sense of the staleness of the
years comes from their prosperity. The dull feeling that time is mere
routine is fastened upon our hearts by nothing more firmly than by
the constant round of fruitful seasons—that fortification of comfort,
that regularity of material supplies, which modern life assures to so
many. Adversity would brace us to a new expectation of the near
and strong action of our God. This is perhaps the meaning of the
sudden mention of natural plagues in the seventeenth verse of our
Psalm. Not in spite of the extremes of misfortune, but just because
of them, should we exult in the God of our salvation; and realise that
it is by discipline He makes His Church to feel that she is not
marching over the dreary levels of nameless years, but on our high
places He makes us to march.
“Grant, Almighty God, as the dulness and hardness of our flesh is
so great that it is needful for us to be in various ways afflicted—oh
grant that we patiently bear Thy chastisement, and under a deep
feeling of sorrow flee to Thy mercy displayed to us in Christ, so that
we depend not on the earthly blessings of this perishable life, but
relying on Thy word go forward in the course of our calling, until at
length we be gathered to that blessed rest which is laid up for us in
heaven, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”[453]
 OBADIAH

And Saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to

judge Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be
Jehovah’s.
 CHAPTER XIII

THE BOOK OF OBADIAH

The Book of Obadiah is the smallest among the prophets, and the
smallest in all the Old Testament. Yet there is none which better
illustrates many of the main problems of Old Testament criticism. It
raises, indeed, no doctrinal issue nor any question of historical
accuracy. All that it claims to be is The Vision of Obadiah;[454] and
this vague name, with no date or dwelling-place to challenge
comparison with the contents of the book, introduces us without
prejudice to the criticism of the latter. Nor is the book involved in the
central controversy of Old Testament scholarship, the date of the
Law. It has no reference to the Law. Nor is it made use of in the
New Testament. The more freely, therefore, may we study the
literary and historical questions started by the twenty-one verses
which compose the book. Their brief course is broken by differences
of style, and by sudden changes of outlook from the past to the
future. Some of them present a close parallel to another passage of
prophecy, a feature which when present offers a difficult problem to
the critic. Hardly any of the historical allusions are free from
ambiguity, for although the book refers throughout to a single nation
—and so vividly that even if Edom were not named we might still
discern the character and crimes of that bitter brother of Israel—yet
the conflict of Israel and Edom was so prolonged and so
monotonous in its cruelties, that there are few of its many centuries
to which some scholar has not felt himself able to assign, in part or
whole, Obadiah’s indignant oration. The little book has been tossed
out of one century into another by successive critics, till there exists
in their estimates of its date a difference of nearly six hundred years.
[455] Such a fact seems, at first sight, to convict criticism either of
arbitrariness or helplessness;[456] yet a little consideration of details
is enough to lead us to an appreciation of the reasonable methods of
Old Testament criticism, and of its indubitable progress towards
certainty, in spite of our ignorance of large stretches of the history of
Israel. To the student of the Old Testament nothing could be more
profitable than to master the historical and literary questions raised
by the Book of Obadiah, before following them out among the more
complicated problems which are started by other prophetical books
in their relation to the Law of Israel, or to their own titles, or to
claims made for them in the New Testament.

The Book of Obadiah contains a number of verbal parallels to

another prophecy against Edom which appears in Jeremiah xlix. 7–
22. Most critics have regarded this prophecy of Jeremiah as genuine,
and have assigned it to the year 604 B.C. The question is whether
Obadiah or Jeremiah is the earlier. Hitzig and Vatke[457] answered in
favour of Jeremiah; and as the Book of Obadiah also contains a
description of Edom’s conduct in the day of Jerusalem’s overthrow
by Nebuchadrezzar, in 586, they brought the whole book down to
post-exilic times. Very forcible arguments, however, have been
offered for Obadiah’s priority.[458] Upon this priority, as well as on
the facts that Joel, whom they take to be early, quotes from
Obadiah, and that Obadiah’s book occurs among the first six—
presumably the pre-exilic members—of the Twelve, a number of
scholars have assigned all of it to an early period in Israel’s history.
Some fix upon the reign of Jehoshaphat, when Judah was invaded
by Edom and his allies Moab and Ammon, but saved from disaster
through Moab and Ammon turning upon the Edomites and
slaughtering them.[459] To this they refer the phrase in Obadiah 9,
the men of thy covenant have betrayed thee. Others place the whole
book in the reign of Joram of Judah (849—842 B.C.), when, according
to the Chronicles,[460] Judah was invaded and Jerusalem partly
sacked by Philistines and Arabs.[461] But in the story of this invasion,
there is no mention of Edomites, and the argument which is drawn
from Joel’s quotation of Obadiah fails if Joel, as we shall see, be of
late date. With greater prudence Pusey declines to fix a period.
The supporters of a pre-exilic origin for the whole Book of
Obadiah have to explain vv. 11–14, which appear to reflect Edom’s
conduct at the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 586, and
they do so in two ways. Pusey takes the verses as predictive of
Nebuchadrezzar’s siege. Orelli and others believe that they suit
better the conquest and plunder of the city in the time of Jehoram.
But, as Calvin has said, “they seem to be mistaken who think that
Obadiah lived before the time of Isaiah.”
The question, however, very early arose, whether it was possible
to take Obadiah as a unity. Vv. 1–9 are more vigorous and firm than
vv. 10–21. In vv. 1–9 Edom is destroyed by nations who are its
allies; in vv. 10–21 it is still to fall along with other Gentiles in the
general judgment of the Lord.[462] Vv. 10–21 admittedly describe the
conduct of the Edomites at the overthrow of Jerusalem in 586; but
vv. 1–9 probably reflect earlier events; and it is significant that in
them alone occur the parallels to Jeremiah’s prophecy against Edom
in 604. On some of these grounds Ewald regarded the little book as
consisting of two pieces, both of which refer to Edom, but the first of
which was written before Jeremiah, and the second is post-exilic. As
Jeremiah’s prophecy has some features more original than
Obadiah’s,[463] he traced both prophecies to an original oracle
against Edom, of which Obadiah on the whole renders an exact
version. He fixed the date of this oracle in the earlier days of Isaiah,
when Rezin of Syria enabled Edom to assert again its independence
of Judah, and Edom won back Elath, which Uzziah had taken.[464]
Driver, Wildeboer and Cornill[465] adopt this theory, with the
exception of the period to which Ewald refers the original oracle.
According to them, the Book of Obadiah consists of two pieces, vv.
1–9 pre-exilic, and vv. 10–21 post-exilic and descriptive in 11–14 of
Nebuchadrezzar’s sack of Jerusalem.
This latter point need not be contested.[466] But is it clear that 1–
9 are so different from 10–21 that they must be assigned to another
period? Are they necessarily pre-exilic? Wellhausen thinks not, and
has constructed still another theory of the origin of the book, which,
like Vatke’s, brings it all down to the period after the Exile.
There is no mention in the book either of Assyria or of Babylonia.
[467]The allies who have betrayed Edom (ver. 7) are therefore
probably those Arabian tribes who surrounded it and were its
frequent confederates.[468] They are described as sending Edom to
the border (ib.). Wellhausen thinks that this can only refer to the
great northward movement of Arabs which began to press upon the
fertile lands to the south-east of Israel during the time of the
Captivity. Ezekiel[469] prophesies that Ammon and Moab will
disappear before the Arabs, and we know that by the year 312 the
latter were firmly settled in the territories of Edom.[470] Shortly
before this the Hagarenes appear in Chronicles, and Se’ir is called by
the Arabic name Gebal,[471] while as early as the fifth century
“Malachi”[472] records the desolation of Edom’s territory by the
jackals of the wilderness, and the expulsion of the Edomites, who
will not return. The Edomites were pushed up into the Negeb of
Israel, and occupied the territory round, and to the south of, Hebron
till their conquest by John Hyrcanus about 130; even after that it
was called Idumæa.[473] Wellhausen would assign Obadiah 1–7 to
the same stage of this movement as is reflected in “Malachi” i. 1–5;
and, apart from certain parentheses, would therefore take the whole
of Obadiah as a unity from the end of the fifth century before Christ.
In that case Giesebrecht argues that the parallel prophecy, Jeremiah
xlix. 7–22, must be reckoned as one of the passages of the Book of
Jeremiah in which post-exilic additions have been inserted.[474]
Our criticism of this theory may start from the seventh verse of
Obadiah: To the border they have sent thee, all the men of thy
covenant have betrayed thee, they have overpowered thee, the men
of thy peace. On our present knowledge of the history of Edom it is
impossible to assign the first of these clauses to any period before
the Exile. No doubt in earlier days Edom was more than once
subjected to Arab razzias. But up to the Jewish Exile the Edomites
were still in possession of their own land. So the Deuteronomist[475]
implies, and so Ezekiel[476] and perhaps the author of Lamentations.
[477]
Wellhausen’s claim, therefore, that the seventh verse of
Obadiah refers to the expulsion of Edomites by Arabs in the sixth or
fifth century B.C. may be granted.[478] But does this mean that verses
1–6 belong, as he maintains, to the same period? A negative answer
seems required by the following facts. To begin with, the seventh
verse is not found in the parallel prophecy in Jeremiah. There is no
reason why it should not have been used there, if that prophecy had
been compiled at a time when the expulsion of the Edomites was
already an accomplished fact. But both by this omission and by all its
other features, that prophecy suits the time of Jeremiah, and we
may leave it, therefore, where it was left till the appearance of
Wellhausen’s theory—namely, with Jeremiah himself.[479] Moreover
Jeremiah xlix. 9 seems to have been adapted in Obadiah 5 in order
to suit verse 6. But again, Obadiah 1–6, which contains so many
parallels to Jeremiah’s prophecy, also seems to imply that the
Edomites are still in possession of their land. The nations (we may
understand by this the Arab tribes) are risen against Edom, and
Edom is already despicable in face of them (vv. 1, 2); but he has not
yet fallen, any more than, to the writer of Isaiah xlv.—xlvii., who
uses analogous language, Babylon is already fallen. Edom is weak
and cannot resist the Arab razzias. But he still makes his eyrie on
high and says: Who will bring me down? To which challenge Jehovah
replies, not ‘I have brought thee down,’ but I will bring thee down.
The post-exilic portion of Obadiah, then, I take to begin with verse
7; and the author of this prophecy has begun by incorporating in vv.
1–6 a pre-exilic prophecy against Edom, which had been already,
and with more freedom, used by Jeremiah. Verses 8–9 form a
difficulty. They return to the future tense, as if the Edomites were
still to be cut off from Mount Esau. But verse 10, as Wellhausen
points out, follows on naturally to verse 7, and, with its successors,
clearly points to a period subsequent to Nebuchadrezzar’s overthrow
of Jerusalem. The change from the past tense in vv. 10–11 to the
imperatives of 12–14 need cause, in spite of what Pusey says, no
difficulty, but may be accounted for by the excited feelings of the
prophet. The suggestion has been made, and it is plausible, that
Obadiah speaks as an eye-witness of that awful time. Certainly there
is nothing in the rest of the prophecy (vv. 15–21) to lead us to bring
it further down than the years following the destruction of
Jerusalem. Everything points to the Jews being still in exile. The
verbs which describe the inviolateness of Jerusalem (17), and the
reinstatement of Israel in their heritage (17, 19), and their conquest
of Edom (18), are all in the future. The prophet himself appears to
write in exile (20). The captivity of Jerusalem is in Sepharad (ib.)
and the saviours have to come up to Mount Zion; that is to say, they
are still beyond the Holy Land (21).[480]
The one difficulty in assigning this date to the prophecy is that
nothing is said in the Hebrew of ver. 19 about the re-occupation of
the hill-country of Judæa itself, but here the Greek may help us.[481]
Certainly every other feature suits the early days of the Exile.
The result of our inquiry is that the Book of Obadiah was written
at that time by a prophet in exile, who was filled by the same hatred
of Edom as filled another exile, who in Babylon wrote Psalm cxxxvii.;
and that, like so many of the exilic writers, he started from an earlier
prophecy against Edom, already used by Jeremiah.[482] [Nowack
(Comm., 1897) takes vv. 1–14 (with additions in vv. 1, 5, 6, 8f. and
12) to be from a date not long after the Fall of Jerusalem, alluded to
in vv. 11–14; and vv. 15–21 to belong to a later period, which it is
impossible to fix exactly.]
There is nothing in the language of the book to disturb this
conclusion. The Hebrew of Obadiah is pure; unlike its neighbour, the
Book of Jonah, it contains neither Aramaisms nor other symptoms of
decadence. The text is very sound. The Septuagint Version enables
us to correct vv. 7 and 17, offers the true division between vv. 9 and
10, but makes an omission which leaves no sense in ver. 17.[483] It
will be best to give all the twenty-one verses together before
commenting on their spirit.

THE VISION OF OBADIAH.

 Thus hath the Lord Jehovah spoken concerning Edom.[484]
“A report have we heard from Jehovah, and a messenger has
been sent through the nations, ‘Up and let us rise against her to
battle.’ Lo, I have made thee small among the nations, thou art very
despised! The arrogance of thy heart hath misled thee, dweller in
clefts of the Rock[485]; the height is his dwelling, that saith in his
heart ‘Who shall bring me down to earth!’ Though thou build high as
the eagle, though between the stars thou set thy nest, thence will I
bring thee down—oracle of Jehovah. If thieves had come into thee
by night (how art thou humbled!),[486] would they not steal just
what they wanted? If vine-croppers had come into thee, would they
not leave some gleanings? (How searched out is Esau, how rifled his
treasures!)” But now to thy very border have they sent thee, all the
men of thy covenant[487] have betrayed thee, the men of thy peace
have overpowered thee[488]; they kept setting traps for thee—there
is no understanding in him! “[489]Shall it not be in that day—oracle of
Jehovah—that I will cause the wise men to perish from Edom, and
understanding from Mount Esau? And thy heroes, O Teman, shall be
dismayed, till[490] every man be cut off from Mount Esau.” For the
slaughter,[491] for the outraging of thy brother Jacob, shame doth
cover thee, and thou art cut off for ever. In the day of thy standing
aloof,[492] in the day when strangers took captive his substance, and
aliens came into his gates,[493] and they cast lots on Jerusalem, even
thou wert as one of them! Ah, gloat not[494] upon the day of thy
brother,[495] the day of his misfortune[496]; exult not over the sons of
Judah in the day of their destruction, and make not thy mouth
large[497] in the day of distress. Come not up into the gate of My
people in the day of their disaster. Gloat not thou, yea thou, upon his
ills, in the day of his disaster, nor put forth thy hand to his substance
in the day of his disaster, nor stand at the parting[498] of the ways
(?) to cut off his fugitives; nor arrest his escaped ones in the day of
distress.
For near is the day of Jehovah, upon all the nations— as thou
hast done, so shall it be done to thee: thy deed shall come back on
thine own head.[499]
For as ye[500] have drunk on my holy mount, all the nations shall
drink continuously, drink and reel, and be as though they had not
been.[501] But on Mount Zion shall be refuge, and it shall be
inviolate, and the house of Jacob shall inherit those who have
disinherited them.[502] For the house of Jacob shall be fire, and the
house of Joseph a flame, but the house of Esau shall become
stubble, and they shall kindle upon them and devour them, and
there shall not one escape of the house of Esau—for Jehovah hath
spoken.
And the Negeb shall possess Mount Esau, and the Shephelah the
Philistines,[503] and the Mountain[504] shall possess Ephraim and the
field of Samaria,[505] and Benjamin shall possess Gilead. And the
exiles of this host[506] of the children of Israel shall possess(?) the
land[507] of the Canaanites unto Sarephath, and the exiles of
Jerusalem who are in Sepharad[508] shall inherit the cities of the
Negeb. And saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge Mount
Esau, and the kingdom shall be Jehovah’s.
 CHAPTER XIV

EDOM AND ISRAEL

OBADIAH 1–21

If the Book of Obadiah presents us with some of the most difficult

questions of criticism, it raises besides one of the hardest ethical
problems in all the vexed history of Israel.
Israel’s fate has been to work out their calling in the world
through antipathies rather than by sympathies, but of all the
antipathies which the nation experienced none was more bitter and
more constant than that towards Edom. The rest of Israel’s enemies
rose and fell like waves: Canaanites were succeeded by Philistines,
Philistines by Syrians, Syrians by Greeks. Tyrant relinquished his
grasp of God’s people to tyrant: Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian,
Persian; the Seleucids, the Ptolemies. But Edom was always there,
and fretted his anger for ever.[509] From that far back day when their
ancestors wrestled in the womb of Rebekah to the very eve of the
Christian era, when a Jewish king[510] dragged the Idumeans
beneath the yoke of the Law, the two peoples scorned, hated and
scourged each other, with a relentlessness that finds no analogy,
between kindred and neighbour nations, anywhere else in history.
About 1030 David, about 130 the Hasmoneans, were equally at war
with Edom; and few are the prophets between those distant dates
who do not cry for vengeance against him or exult in his overthrow.
The Book of Obadiah is singular in this, that it contains nothing else
than such feelings and such cries. It brings no spiritual message. It
speaks no word of sin, or of righteousness, or of mercy, but only
doom upon Edom in bitter resentment at his cruelties, and in
exultation that, as he has helped to disinherit Israel, Israel shall
disinherit him. Such a book among the prophets surprises us. It
seems but a dark surge staining the stream of revelation, as if to
exhibit through what a muddy channel these sacred waters have
been poured upon the world. Is the book only an outbreak of Israel’s
selfish patriotism? This is the question we have to discuss in the
present chapter.
Reasons for the hostility of Edom and Israel are not far to seek.
The two nations were neighbours with bitter memories and rival
interests. Each of them was possessed by a strong sense of
distinction from the rest of mankind, which goes far to justify the
story of their common descent. But while in Israel this pride was
chiefly due to the consciousness of a peculiar destiny not yet
realised—a pride painful and hungry—in Edom it took the
complacent form of satisfaction in a territory of remarkable isolation
and self-sufficiency, in large stores of wealth, and in a reputation for
worldly wisdom—a fulness that recked little of the future, and felt no
need of the Divine.
The purple mountains, into which the wild sons of Esau
clambered, run out from Syria upon the desert, some hundred miles
by twenty of porphyry and red sandstone. They are said to be the
finest rock scenery in the world. “Salvator Rosa never conceived so
savage and so suitable a haunt for banditti.”[511] From Mount Hor,
which is their summit, you look down upon a maze of mountains,
cliffs, chasms, rocky shelves and strips of valley. On the east the
range is but the crested edge of a high, cold plateau, covered for the
most part by stones, but with stretches of corn land and scattered
woods. The western walls, on the contrary, spring steep and bare,
black and red, from the yellow of the desert ‘Arabah. The interior is
reached by defiles, so narrow that two horsemen may scarcely ride
abreast, and the sun is shut out by the overhanging rocks. Eagles,
hawks and other mountain birds fly screaming round the traveller.
Little else than wild-fowls’ nests are the villages; human eyries
perched on high shelves or hidden away in caves at the ends of the
deep gorges. There is abundance of water. The gorges are filled with
tamarisks, oleanders and wild figs. Besides the wheat lands on the
eastern plateau, the wider defiles hold fertile fields and terraces for
the vine. Mount Esau is, therefore, no mere citadel with supplies for
a limited siege, but a well-stocked, well-watered country, full of food
and lusty men, yet lifted so high, and locked so fast by precipice and
slippery mountain, that it calls for little trouble of defence. Dweller in
the clefts of the rock, the height is his habitation, that saith in his
heart: Who shall bring me down to earth?[512]
On this rich fortress-land the Edomites enjoyed a civilisation far
above that of the tribes who swarmed upon the surrounding deserts;
and at the same time they were cut off from the lands of those
Syrian nations who were their equals in culture and descent. When
Edom looked out of himself, he looked down and across—down upon
the Arabs, whom his position enabled him to rule with a loose, rough
hand, and across at his brothers in Palestine, forced by their more
open territories to make alliances with and against each other, from
all of which he could afford to hold himself free. That alone was
bound to exasperate them. In Edom himself it appears to have bred
a want of sympathy, a habit of keeping to himself and ignoring the
claims both of pity and of kinship—with which he is charged by all
the prophets. He corrupted his natural feelings, and watched his
passion for ever.[513] Thou stoodest aloof![514]
 This self-sufficiency was aggravated by the position of the
country among several of the main routes of ancient trade. The
masters of Mount Se’ir held the harbours of ‘Akaba, into which the
gold ships came from Ophir. They intercepted the Arabian caravans
and cut the roads to Gaza and Damascus. Petra, in the very heart of
Edom, was in later times the capital of the Nabatean kingdom,
whose commerce rivalled that of Phœnicia, scattering its inscriptions
from Teyma in Central Arabia up to the very gates of Rome.[515] The
earlier Edomites were also traders, middlemen between Arabia and
the Phœnicians; and they filled their caverns with the wealth both of
East and West.[516] There can be little doubt that it was this which
first drew the envious hand of Israel upon a land so cut off from
their own and so difficult of invasion. Hear the exultation of the
ancient prophet whose words Obadiah has borrowed: How searched
out is Esau, and his hidden treasures rifled![517] But the same is
clear from the history. Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Amaziah, Uzziah and
other Jewish invaders of Edom were all ambitious to command the
Eastern trade through Elath and Ezion-geber. For this it was
necessary to subdue Edom; and the frequent reduction of the
country to a vassal state, with the revolts in which it broke free,
were accompanied by terrible cruelties upon both sides.[518] Every
century increased the tale of bitter memories between the brothers,
and added the horrors of a war of revenge to those of a war for
gold.
The deepest springs of their hate, however, bubbled in their
blood. In genius, temper and ambition, the two peoples were of
opposite extremes. It is very singular that we never hear in the Old
Testament of the Edomite gods. Israel fell under the fascination of
every neighbouring idolatry, but does not even mention that Edom