Lives of Scripture

The nation descended from Esau (also called Edom), settled in the mountainous region of Seir south of the Dead Sea. Edom refused Israel passage during the wilderness years (Numbers 20:14-21) and remained a persistent, often bitter rival through the monarchy — rebelling against Judah's control under Jehoram (2 Kings 8:20-22) and later gloating over Jerusalem's fall, which the book of Obadiah condemns at length.

The Edomites

The Edomites descended from Esau, Jacob's twin brother. Before the two were born, God told Rebekah that two nations were struggling within her and that the older would serve the younger (Genesis 25:22-23). Genesis 36 lists Esau's descendants and the kings who ruled in Edom before Israel had any king (Genesis 36:31). Because of that kinship, the law told Israel not to despise an Edomite, since he was their brother (Deuteronomy 23:7-8).

The brotherhood rarely showed. Doeg the Edomite, Saul's chief herdsman, informed on David and then killed the priests of Nob when no one else would (1 Samuel 21:7; 22:9-19). David conquered Edom and stationed garrisons there (2 Samuel 8:14), and Hadad, a member of Edom's royal family who had escaped to Egypt, returned to trouble Solomon (1 Kings 11:14-22). Edom broke free of Judah under Jehoram (2 Kings 8:20-22), and Amaziah later defeated the Edomites in the Valley of Salt (2 Kings 14:7). When Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, Edom cheered it on (Psalm 137:7), and the book of Obadiah answers that betrayal of a brother with judgment. Malachi points to Edom's ruin as proof of God's love for Israel (Malachi 1:2-5), a passage Paul takes up in Romans 9:10-13.

In the New Testament, Edom's territory appears under its Greek name, Idumea, among the places crowds came from to hear Jesus (Mark 3:8). According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Herod the Great's family was Idumean.