IDUM2EA (id-d-mel), (Gr. 'Hi:m=1a, id-oo-nzah' yah). We often meet with the phrase Eretz Edam, 'the Land of Edom,' and once with the poetic form Sedeh-Edom, 'the Field of Edom' (Judg. v:4). The inhabitants are sometimes styled Beni-Edom, 'the Children of Edom,' and poetically Bath-Edon, 'the Daughter of Edom' (Lam. iv:27, 22). A single person was called ';114;, Ed-o-mee', 'an Edomite' (Deut. xxiii:8), of which the feminine Ed-o-meeth', occurs in Kings xi:T.
1. JVame. (1) Edom. The name was de rived frcm Isaac's son Edom, otherwise called Esau, the elder twin-brother of Jacob (see EsAu). It signifies red, and seems first to have been sug gested by his appearance at his birth, when 'he came out all red,' e., covered with red hair (Gen. xxv :25), and was afterward more formally and permanently imposed upon him on account of his- unworthy disposal of his birthright for a mess of red lentils (Gen. xxv:3o). The region which came to bear his name is the mountainous tract on the east side of the great valleys El Ghor and El Araba, extending between the Dead Sea and the Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea. Into this district Esau removed during his father's lifetime, and his posterity gradually obtained pos session of it as the country which God had as signed for their inheritance in the prophetic bless ing pronounced by his father Isaac (Gen. xxvii: 39, ; xxxii :3 Deut. :5-12, 22).
(2) Mount Seir. Previously to their occupa tion of the country, it was called Mount Seir, a designation indeed which it never entirely lost (see SEnt ; MOUNT SEIR, 2). The word seir means hairy (being thus synonymous with Esau), and, when applied to a country, may signify rugged, mountamous, and so says Josephus (Antiq. 20, 3) : 'Esau named the country "Roughness" from his own hairy roughness.' But in Gen. xxxvi :20 we read of an individual of the name of Seir, who had before this inhabited the land, and from whom it may have received its first appel lation.
The first mention made of Mount Seir in Scrip ture is in Gen. xiv :6, where Chedorlaomer and
his confederates are said to have smitten 'the Horim in their Mount Seir.' (See CHEDORLAOMER.) Among the earliest human habitations were caves, either formed by nature or easily excavated, and for the construction of these the mountains of Edom afforded peculiar facilities. Hence the designation given to the aboriginal inhabitants— Horim, e., cave-dwellers. an epithet of similar import with the Greek Troglodytes. Even in the days of Jerome 'the whole of the southern part of Idurrixa, from Eleutheropolis to Petra and Aila, was full of caverns used as dwellings, on account of the sun's excessive heat' (Jerome on Obadiah, verse 1) ; and there is reason to believe that the possessors of the country in every age occupied similar habitations, many traces of which are yet seen in or near Petra, the renowned metropolis.
2. History. We are informed in Dent. ii: 12 that 'the children of Esau succeeded (marg. inherited) the Horim when they had destroyed them from before them, and dwelt in their stead, as Israel did unto the land of his possession, which Jehovah gave unto them.' From this it may be inferred that the extirpation of the Horim by the Esauites was, like that of the Canaanitcs by Israel, very gradual and slow. Some think this supposition is confirmed by the genealogical tables preserved in the thirty-sixth chapter of Gen esis (comp. Chron. i), where we have, along with a list of the chiefs of Edom, a similar cata logue of Horite chieftains, who are presumed to have been their contemporaries. But for the chronology of these ancient documents we pos sess no data whatsoever, and very precarious therefore, must be any deductions that are drawn from them. This much, however, we there learn of the political constitution of the Seirite abori gines, that, like the Esauites and Israelites, they were divided into tribes, and these tribes were subdivided into families—the very polity which still obtains among the Arabs by whom Idumxa is now peopled.