Ezekiel 35:6

God notices the feelings of the heart, and He makes distinctions in judgment as He does everywhere else. Israel had many proud enemies. Which of them was not ready to harm the people Jehovah had chosen? But He fixes His eyes on "the old enmity" of Edom, and on a cruelty that went beyond its usual measure in the day of Israel's trouble, "at the time of the iniquity of the end." There was not an atom of generosity in it. Natural feeling had turned bitter. His people had shamefully dishonoured Him, and He was correcting them in measure. Who were the Edomites to use that as their chance to crush without measure and destroy without mercy?

Simply 'since.' Ezek. 35:6.

We have already had this in brief in an earlier prophecy, but God returns to dwell on it for the lesson that is in it, a lesson we may all well ponder. Anyone who nurses enmity in his soul will himself be pursued by the enmity he nurses. And when this enmity is against God and against His grace, then however he disguises it, it must be judged as such, and the end is sure.

But the enemy's wrath is not righteous; it is of another character. At bottom it is against Jehovah, as all unbelief is, and that is what comes out here in the end. The question is not between Edom and Israel, but between Edom and God. If they said of the mountains of Israel that they were desolate, was it not true? But they did not see the difference between chastening and rejection. So they said, "They are given us to devour."

The judgment passes on to Edom, the typical enemy of Israel. Edom pictures for us the world of the old man, as we may say — the natural fallen man. He is the most real enemy we have as Christians, and no less so because he is related to us all by nature, just as Edom was the unbrotherly brother of Israel. His enmity is described here as revenge... Nothing is said here about the cause of his enmity, which is in fact built into his nature.

There is no doubt that Edom is the special object of judgment in the last days... Ezekiel 35 refers directly to the time of the Babylonian captivity, when Edom, the rival of Jacob, rejoiced cruelly over the ruin of Jerusalem. It does go on to the final desolation of Mount Seir. Isaiah 63, though, is clearly Christ's personal coming.

Let us take the moral of it to heart, for we may easily fall into the same kind of spirit as the Edomite. Jeremiah saw the failures and sins of God's people, but he wept over them. Daniel and other godly men confessed those sins as their own. The spirit of the Edomite is a different thing: bitter hatred against people who, however they may have failed, are still the people of God. This spirit is especially displeasing to Him.