Thus says Yahweh: "For three transgressions of Edom, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment; Because he pursued his brother with the sword, And cast off all pity, And his anger raged continually, And he kept his wrath forever;
To “pursue” is more than to fight. They followed after, in order to destroy a remnant, “and cast off all pity:” literally, and more strongly, “corrupted his compassions, tendernesses.” Edom did violence to his natural feelings, as Ezekiel, using the same word, says of Tyre, “corrupting Ezekiel 28:17 his wisdom,” that is, perverting it from the end for which God gave it, and so destroying it. Edom “steeled himself,” as we say, against his better feelings,” his better nature,” “deadened” them. But so they do not live again. Man is not master of the life and death of his feelings, anymore than of his natural existence. He can destroy; he cannot re-create. And he does, so far, “corrupt,” decay, do to death, his own feelings, whenever, in any signal instance, he acts against them. Edom was not simply unfeeling. He destroyed all “his tender yearnings” over suffering, such as God has put into every human heart, until it destroys them. Ordinary anger is satisfied and slaked by its indulgence; malice is fomented and fed and invigorated by it. Edom ever, as occasion gratified his anger; “his anger did tear continually;” yet, though raging as some wild ravening animal, without control, “he kept his wrath for ever,” not within bounds, but to let it loose anew. He retained it when he ought to have parted with it, and let it loose when he ought to have restrained it.