Ezekiel 35:7

Mount Seir is Edom's possession, a "rough," or "rugged place," as the word means. Esau has chosen for himself; therefore he has not chosen well. Does ever anyone choose well who chooses for himself?

Seir is the early name of the long range of mountains running south from the Salt Sea. It is also called "the land of Seir." The Horites lived there first, and afterwards the descendants of Esau, and it took the name Edom. The word of Jehovah announced to the prophet the perpetual desolation of Mount Seir.

God notices the feelings of the heart, and He makes distinctions in judgment as He does everywhere else. Israel had many proud enemies, and every one of them was ready to harm the people of Jehovah's choice. But He fixes His eyes on "the old enmity" of Edom, and on a hardness that was crueller than usual on the day of their disaster... There was not an atom of generosity in it. Natural feeling had turned to gall and wormwood. His people had dishonoured Him shamefully, and He was chastening them in measure. Who and what were the Edomites, to take advantage of that and crush without measure and destroy without mercy?

The enmity a man nurses in his soul will turn and pursue the man himself. And when that enmity is against God and against His grace, however he disguises it, God must judge it for what it is.

When God chastises His people, the world expects to take everything for itself. But that chastisement is only the forerunner of the world's own judgment.

The question is not between Edom and Israel, but between Edom and God. If they said the mountains of Israel were desolate, was that not true? But they did not see the difference between chastening and rejection. So they said, "They are given us to devour." Israel may for a time cast themselves out of the very land that is their own. Edom can never enjoy it.

Jehovah held out hope to some enemies. To Edom He does not say that He will bring their captives back in the latter days... Edom in particular must have this marked and definite kind of judgment. The joy of the age to come will not reverse its sad sentence.

Edom was to know that God is Jehovah, the true and unchanging God in what He threatens, as in what He promises.

Let us take the moral of it to heart, for we can easily fall into the same 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 bitter hatred against people who may have failed, but who are still the people of God. This spirit is especially displeasing to Him.