"The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come."-ISAIAH xxi. 11, 12. THE words prefixed to this chapter may have a primary meaning applicable to local circumstances and to temporary events; but it seems to me that the words have an ulterior meaning, and remain yet to be fulfilled, if indeed they are not now actually fulfilling. The expression "burden" is frequently used by the Prophets. It denotes that some great message has been intrusted to them, which lies, from its sorrowful contents, like a load or burden on their souls; that they are charged with a solemn but a sad embassy; commanded, in short, to bear tidings which must be told, though the heart should break while the lips give utterance to them; and that there is a weight upon their spirits, and their spirits can only be unloaded by letting that weight fall where the wisdom and the will of God had fixed that it should fall. The minister of the gospel is not like the prophet of old. His is a joyful work: he is appointed to proclaim good tidings—“glad tidings of great joy." He is, indeed, the ambassador of God, but his embassy is an embassy of gladness; and while the prophet's spirit must have often sunk beneath the weight of the calamities he was commissioned to predict, the spirit of the minister of the gospel should feel his message to be wings to soar with, rather than a weight by which to be depressed; for he proclaims clearly a Saviour Christ the Lord-glad tidings to all people! And yet the minister of the gospel has some messages not so joyful. When he sees the sword gleaming in the distant horizon, and ready to fall upon a guilty people, it is his duty, as a watchman, to say so; when he sees sin indulged in that must end in the ruin of a people, it is his duty to lift up his voice like a trumpet, and announce distinctly and intelligibly what it leads to. While the minister's chief message is joy, there are thus parts of it that must be sadness; and no portion of it is more sad or more solemn to be thought of than this that the gospel preached during each year has been to some in his congregation, as he must fear, a savor of death, though he may rejoice also, that it has been to others a savor of life. We have lately passed through years darkened by overwhelming clouds; through scenes and circumstances that have shaken the firmest nerves, and made to quail the strongest hearts. They who profess to have a wider range of vision, see yet heavier calamities lowering in the distant horizon. Whether it shall be so, or not, we know not. This, however, we do know be Christians, and all things will turn up their sunny sides to you, and the very sounds that convulse the universe shall come to you in music, because they are the intimations that your redemption draweth nigh, and that the home and the kingdom of your Father is approaching nearer, day by day. - a most "Dumah" is only another form of expression for “Idumea," the Country of Edom. It is one of the names given to Edom by the prophet. It lay south of Palestine, and was peopled by the descendants of Esau, Jacob's brother: its capital city was Petra. I need not tell you what God has here said of Petra, or Seir, and how strictly it has been fulfilled; most of the works that treat of the fulfilment of ancient prophecy refer to Idumea, or Dumah, or Edom, with Petra, its capital, as at present striking evidence of the minute fulfilment of God's predictions. "Edom," said God, "shall be a wilderness;" a line of confusion and stones of emptiness shall it be. I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and Mount Seir (i. e. the hill on which Petra was built) I will make a perpetual desolation." Every traveller who has visited that country, and inspected the site and rocky caves of Petra, testifies that every prediction of God respecting it has been literally and minutely fulfilled. The origin of the quarrel between Edom or Idumea and the children of Israel a quarrel that is alluded to frequently by Isaiah and by all the prophets was early in origin. and lasting in effect. The strife between Jacob and Esau was perpetuated in their descendants; for the children of Edom, who sprang from Esau, carried on a constant hostility, whenever the opportunity occurred, with the children of Jacob or the tribes of Israel. This quarrel was renewed in one of its bitterest forms, when the Israelites were passing through the wilderness in order to reach the promised land: they had, as a map will easily show, to pass through the land of Edom, before they could reach Palestine. When Moses came to Dumah or Idumea, as it is recorded in Numbers xx. 14, "He sent messengers unto the king of Edom, Thus saith thy brother Israel" — affectionate and Christian language addressed by Moses, as the head of the tribes of Israel, to the children of Esau, and a precedent for us to use kind language at least - ―never a very great sacrifice, even to the bitterest foe with whom we have to contend "Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travel that hath befallen us." Moses appeals to his pity: "How our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time; . . . And when we cried unto the Lord, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost part of thy border. Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country: we will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of thy wells; we will go by the king's high way, we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed thy borders." What a beautifully Christian spirit actuates Moses in speaking thus to a known, relentless, and bitter foe! You would suppose that Edom would thus have replied to the peaceful message of Moses: "You are a people that have come forth from the depths of oppression and bondage in Egypt - you are weary and wayworn with a long and perilous journey; you ask what is reasonable; and if you will maintain the discipline you promise among the half million of followers by whom you are surrounded, you will be quite welcome to pass along our high way towards your own land." "But Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword. And the children of Israel said unto him, We will go by the high way: and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then will I pay for it: I will only, without doing any thing else, go through on my feet. And he said, Thou shalt not go through." What obstinacy, antipathy, and bitter hatred lurked in the King of Edom's heart! "And Edom came out against him with much people, and with a strong hand. Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border: wherefore Israel" did not instantly fall upon him, and make war upon him, which would be the taste of the day, the vote of the multitude, but "turned away from him," and went another way. We find the quarrel begun between Jacob and Esau thus perpetuated; and such was the hostility that still rankled in the descendants of Esau, that they would neither give the passage as a favor, nor accept a price for it. Now, some think that the various references in the Prophets to the judgments which were to come upon Edom, refer entirely to the time when Israel was carried away captive into Babylon, on which occurrence the children of Edom, instead of being sorry, as they might have been expected to be, laughed, rejoiced, and triumphed that at last they had gained a victory, without struggle, through the judgment of God, which had thus fallen on their enemies. That some allusion is made to this epoch, I think is plain from what is stated in Psalm cxxxvii.: "By the rivers of Babylon, there (say the Jews) we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion," etc.; and then, at ver. 7, "Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof". -as if, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldeans, and the Jews were led away captive, the children of Edom, instead of expressing sympathy with a discrowned King and a scattered population, gave utterance to the laugh and shout of merriment and exultation, because the people whom |