God’s Word To Those Who Would Usurp The Holy Land…Ezekiel 34-39 pt 3

Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it, And say unto it, Thus saith the
Lord God; Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate. I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 35:1-4)

The 34-39th chapters of Ezekiel are a prophecy about the final and complete restoration of Israel. The Prophet first addresses the Shepherds of Israel, who have misled the nation into the pit (Exile,judgment,the curse) that it has long languished in.The Good Shepherd of the flock of Israel will come personally and regather the sheep which have long been scattered and subject to numerous miseries.

In this chapter the Prophet addresses those who vigorously assert their erroneous claim to the land God gave to the seed of Abraham,Isaac and Jacob.

The address is to Mount Seir. Mt Seir is in what is now Southern Jordan, and was the area God gave to the descendants of Edom, or Esau.

Esau is Jacob’s twin. He was the firstborn, thus humanly speaking had the right of double inheritance from Isaac his Father. Isaac tried to pass on the Abrahamic blessing to Esau, but Rebecca and Jacob intervened and tricked Isaac into giving the blessing to Jacob,

Never does the Word of God condemn Rebecca or Jacob for that act of deception. Only Esau and his uncle Laban condemn them. Rebeccah was acting to preserve the promise of the seed, in accordance with the original prophecy given her when the two twins were in her womb,

The Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.”(Genesis 25:23)

Isaac himself acknowledged to Esau that the blessing was properly placed, in spite of the deception involved, when he told the tearful Esau that he had blessed Jacob and assured him that indeed his brother would be blessed.

And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.(Genesis 27:33)

Esau went on to become a mighty nation, a perennial enemy of Jacob, and eventually the nation was subdued, forcibly converted to Judaism ( The Herods were Edomites), but sometime after the destruction of the Jewish Temple, the Edomites as a nation dissolved into the various Middle Eastern Roman Provinces.

But the Edomites are end time players.They re-emerge and play a prominent role in the horrors of the tribulation. Who would modern these Edomites Be?

The Word of God identifies them clearly. Modern Edomites are those people who have abrogated to themselves the land God assigned to the children of Israel.They identify themselves as “Palestinians” and have the full backing of the ‘world community”in their quest for a “Palestinian homeland”.

The modern, near eastern Arab Muslim world has claimed an entirely new identity, they are now (as of 1965) “Palestinians”, a name put upon Judea as a humiliation by the Romans after the Bar Cochba revolt. Provincia,Syria,Palestina, so named for the long dead and defeated enemies of Israel, the Philistines.