Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Obadiah 1:3
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
The pride of thy heart hath deceived thee - Not the strength of its mountain-fastnesses, strong though they were, deceived Edom, but “the pride of his heart.” That strength was but the occasion which called forth the “pride.” Yet, it was strong in its abode. God, as it were, admits it to them. “Dweller in the clefts of the rocks, the loftiness of his habitation.” “The whole southern country of the Edomites,” says Jerome, “from Eleutheropolis to Petra and Selah (which are the possessions of Esau), hath minute dwellings in caves; and on account of the oppressive heat of the sun, as being a southern province, hath under ground cottages.” Its inhabitants, whom Edom expelled Deuteronomy 2:12, were hence called Horites, i. e., dwellers in caves. Its chief city was called Selah or Petra, “rock.” It was a city single of its kind amid the works of man . “The eagles” placed their nests in the rocky caves at a height of several hundred feet above the level of the valley .... The power of the conception which would frame a range of mountain-rocks into a memorial of the human name, which, once of noble name and high bepraised, sought, through might of its own, to clothe itself with the imperishablness of the eternal Word, is here the same as in the contemporary monuments of the temple-rocks of Elephantine or at least those of the Egyptian Thebes.” The ornamental buildings, so often admired by travelers, belong to a later date. Those nests in the rocks, piled over one another, meeting you in every recess, lining each fresh winding of the valleys, as each opened on the discoverer , often at heights, where (now that the face of the rock and its approach, probably hewn in it, have crumbled away) you can scarcely imagine how human foot ever climbed , must have been the work of the first hardy mountaineers, whose feet were like the chamois. Such habitations imply, not an uncivilized, only a hardy, active, people. In those narrow valleys, so scorched by a southern sun, they were at once the coolest summer dwellings, and, amid the dearth of fire-wood, the warmest in winter. The dwellings of the living and the sepulchres of the dead were, apparently, hewn out in the same soft red sandstone-rock, and perhaps some of the dwellings of the earlier rock-dwellers were converted into graves by the Nabataeans and their successors who lived in the valley. The central space has traces of other human habitations . “The ground is covered with heaps of hewn stones, foundations of buildings and vestiges of paved streets, all clearly indicating that a large city once existed here” . “They occupy two miles in circumference, affording room in an oriental city for 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants.” Its theater held “above 3,000.” Probably this city belonged altogether to the later, Nabataean, Roman, or Christian times. Its existence illustrates the extent of the ancient city of the rock. The whole space, rocks and valleys, imbedded in the mountains which girt it in, lay invisible even from the summit of Mount Hor . So nestled was it in its rocks, that an enemy could only know of its existence, an army could only approach it, through treachery. Two known approaches only, from the east and west, enter into it. The least remarkable is described as lying amid “wild fantastic mountains,” “rocks in towering masses,” “over steep and slippery passes,” or “winding in recesses below.” Six hours of such passes led to the western side of Petra. The Greeks spoke of it as two days’ journey…
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