Idumea

Idumaea (the Greek and Roman name for Edom) was the region of the southern Judean hill country and the Negev’s edge into which the Edomites moved after the exile. Pressed out of their ancient homeland in Mount Seir by the Nabataean Arabs (Genesis 36:8), the descendants of Esau — “Esau, who is Edom” (Genesis 36:1) — spread west and north into the land around Hebron and Mareshah that had once belonged to the tribe of Judah. By the Hellenistic age this whole district south of Judea was called Idumaea.

In the second century BC the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus conquered Idumaea and compelled its people to be circumcised and to live under the law of the Jews, so that the Idumeans were drawn into the Jewish nation while keeping a distinct name. From this absorbed but still alien people there would soon arise a dynasty that changed the course of the Gospel story.

From an Idumean noble house rose Antipater and his son Herod, whom Rome made king of the Jews — Herod the Great, the Idumean who rebuilt the temple yet sought to kill the infant Jesus and slew the children of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1–3; Matthew 2:16). His sons carried on the line — Archelaus over Judea and Antipas over Galilee (Matthew 2:22; Luke 3:1). So the line of Esau, Israel’s ancient rival, came at last to a throne in Jerusalem at the very hour of the Messiah’s birth, and a son of Edom rose against the Christ — a dark echo of the old word, “two nations are in your womb.”

Idumaea is named once in the Gospels, among the regions whose multitudes streamed to Jesus by the sea (Mark 3:8) — even the old land of Edom drawn to the Lord. The prophets had sworn judgment on Edom, yet Amos also promised that the restored house of David would possess “the remnant of Edom,” words James took up to show the ingathering of the Gentiles (Amos 9:11–12; Acts 15:16–17). So Idumaea stands as a sign that the gospel reaches even Israel’s oldest foes, and that in Christ the long feud of Jacob and Esau is answered by grace.