The Edomites
When describing Petra, most guide books refer only to the Nabateans. As a result, few people know that Petra has some fascinating biblical links. Long before the Nabateans moved into the neighborhood, the Edomites occupied Petra.
Question: Who were the Edomites? Answer: The Edomites were descendants of Esau.
Esau was Isaac’s son and Jacob’s twin brother. When Esau was born, he had red hair. Of Esau’s birth, Genesis 25:25 says, “The first came out red, all over like an hairy garment, and they called his name Esau.”
One day, Esau, a skillful hunter, came in from the fields fatigued and famished. Jacob was preparing soup. Esau said, “Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint.” Here the Bible says, “Therefore was his name called Edom” (Genesis 25:21-34). “Edom” means “red.” The soup Jacob was preparing was red, possibly red lentils.
Esau moved to “the land of Seir, the country of Edom” (Genesis 32:3; 33:16; 36:8). This is a large section of land in modern-day Jordan, south of the Dead Sea, primarily a range of rugged, high mountains punctuated by steep, awe-inspiring ravines. Petra is within its boundaries.
The Bible calls Esau the “father of the Edomites in Mount Seir” (Genesis 36:9). The Lord said that He gave “mount Seir unto Esau for a possession” (Deuteronomy 2:5). Interestingly, the soil of the land where Esau settled is reddish-brown. So, from start to finish, Esau’s life aptly matched his alternate name of “Edom.”
On a summit above Petra’s ruins is Umm al-Biyara, which means “Mother of all Cisterns.” Among the ruins was found a clay seal impression inscribed with the name “Qos-Gabr, King of Edom.” Although archaeologists cannot agree as to the date of the seal impression (some suggest the seventh century B.C.), it is testimony that this was indeed an Edomite settlement. Although it may not have been exactly where Esau lived, it was definitely inhabited by members of his tribe, the Edomites.
The day we headed to Petra, we left the Movenpick Resort at the Dead Sea and drove south on Highway 65. Somewhere soon after we passed the Salt Plains, we entered the biblical land of Edom. (The Zered River was the boundary between Edom to the South and Moab to the North, but we did not see it.) We turned east unto unmarked Highway 60. (In Jordan, most highways and towns are unmarked, at least in English. When we travel, we rely on my usually-accurate-but-not-foolproof innate sense of direction, a sketchy highway map, and a lot of advice from others.)
We came to Tafileh, a town built on the ruins of biblical Tophel (Deuteronomy 1:1). We then turned south on Highway 35. This highway closely follows Jordan’s stretch of what for millennia has been known as the Kings Highway. It was a trade route that passed through Petra, Karak, Madaba, Amman, and Jerash. It originated in Egypt and ended in a town deep within Syria, Resafa.
Moses asked the Edomites if the children of Israel could use this part of the King’s Highway that passed through their land. They refused, and the children of Israel were forced to take a more circuitous and difficult route (Numbers 20:14-21; Judges 11:16-18).
Ah, if this ancient road could speak, what stories it would tell!
Sometime after our turn onto Highway 35, the little Ford car climbed and climbed, up and down, before it finally protested. We stopped on the top of a hill to let it cool down. There we were, far from a service station, and the few people who drove by us did not stop to ask us if we needed help. (That may have been a good thing.) My mom was with us, but fortunately, neither she nor I get easily alarmed about things like that. We just walked around a little, stretching our legs and enjoying the view of the rocks. After quite a while, Bill filled the radiator with some of our precious drinking water and decided that the car was good to go.
We passed through Buseirah, which is the modern city built near ruins of biblical Bozrah, said to be the capital of the Edomite kingdom. Now we were in the heart of Edom. Bozrah means “sheep fold.” It is mentioned throughout Scripture (Genesis 36:33; I Chronicles 1:44; Isaiah 63:1; Amos 1:12; Micah 2:12).
Soon, visibility decreased, and it began to rain a little. Whether we were in fog or clouds, I do not know. Finally, we arrived in Wadi Musa – the Valley of Moses – and checked into the Beit Zaman, our hotel-home for two nights while we explored Petra. Without a doubt, the Edomites of old were a lot tougher than us; we were tired from just one afternoon’s drive through Edom in a modern automobile! What it must have been like to live in such a rugged world!
Jacob and Esau were twin brothers. Jacob is the ancestor of the Israelites. Esau is the ancestor of the Edomites. To the Israelites, God said, “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother” (Deuteronomy 23:7). Yet, as they became neighbors, conflicts seemed inevitable. The saddest part of the conflicts was that, when the Israelites and Edomites fought one another, they were destroying their own blood relatives.
Many of Israel and Judah’s kings warred with Edom: Saul (I Samuel 14:47), David (II Samuel 8:14; I Chronicles 18:13; Psalm 60), Joram (II Kings 8:20-22), Amaziah (II Kings 14:1,7), and Ahaz (II Chronicles 28:16-17).
Personally, I think that the story recorded in I Samuel 21-22 is the most heart wrenching of all Israelite-Edomite conflicts. David was fleeing from King Saul and went to the house of the Lord. Ahimelech the priest helped David, giving him food and the sword of Goliath for a weapon. Almost as a footnote, I Samuel 21:7 tells us that “Doeg, an Edomite, the chiefest of the herdmen that belonged to Saul” was in the temple that day.
Later, Doeg told King Saul that Ahimelech had helped David. In his wrath, King Saul commanded the death of Ahimelech and other priests. “But the servants of the king would not put forth their hand to fall upon the priests of the LORD” (I Samuel 22:17). They had too much reverence for God and His priestly servants.
But King Saul knew who would do his dirty work: Doeg the Edomite. Doeg promptly “slew on that day fourscore and five [85] persons that did wear the linen ephod.” His murders continued in “Nob, the city of the priests,” with the killing of more men, women, children, babies, and animals (I Samuel 22:18-19).
Why Doeg was living in Israel in the first place, especially in such close alliance with King Saul, is itself a mystery. But what gave him the cold nerve to kill the priests of the Lord, when no one else would? The probable reason why he had no compunction about destroying the priests was because Edomites were not true worshippers of Yahweh.
One of Ahimelech’s sons, Abiathar, escaped the slaughter, and came to David. I can almost hear the anguished cry of David’s heart as he admitted, “I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy father’s house” (I Samuel 22:22). In Psalm 52, David speaks of Doeg. “Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength… But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.” David could have said to Doeg, “Yes, you are my blood relative. But in the ways that matter most – worship and reverence of the One True God – we are not related.”
Although the Edomites probably began with the knowledge of Yahweh, they eventually adopted the worship of multiple gods, especially fertility gods and a chief god named Qos.
Because Solomon loved strange women, including Edomite women, his heart was eventually turned away from God. He built high places so his foreign wives could sacrifice to their gods (I Kings 11:1-8).
After King Amaziah had a great victory over the Edomites, “he brought the gods of the children of Seir, and set them up to be his gods, and bowed down himself before them, and burned incense unto them” (II Chronicles 25:14-20).
The Edomites have a sad beginning and a sad ending. Esau will always be known as the brother who despised his birthright (Genesis 25:34). He was the firstborn, and according to Exodus 34:19, the firstborn belonged to the Lord. The firstborn was entrusted with both great blessings and great responsibility, in spiritual and practical matters. For whatever reason, Esau hated his birthright. So the blessing that should have been his was given to his brother Jacob, who, for all his faults, craved the blessings and benefits of the birthright. Although Esau begged his dying father Isaac to bless him also, the blessing he received was not the one he wanted (Genesis 27:18-40).
Esau failed to value what was most important. Unfortunately, his maverick ways transmitted to generation after generation of Edomites. The Prophets issued scathing denunciations of Edom. The book of Obadiah is devoted completely to the Edomites, replete with language that seems to paint a picture of Petra: "The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD” (Obadiah 1:3-4).
Esau provides us with an intensely sobering lesson. Our single actions – good or evil – can have long-reaching results. We should not underestimate how our priorities will affect our families, friends, and our society. In the Old Testament, God wanted the firstborn to be sanctified to Him, dedicated to Him and Him alone. Today, God wants the best we have to give Him. He doesn’t want our leftovers. He wants to be first in our lives because He knows that nothing but His Spirit can give us the deep, deep peace we need and crave. If we exalt anything in our hearts above Him, then that is what we worship and that is what we trust.
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