saith the Lord, I shall stretch forth my hand against Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it, and will make it desolate from Temanand cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth—I will make thy cities desolate. Thou shalt be desolate, O Mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it.'-Ezek. xxv. 12; xxxv. 15.

'For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversies of Zion-from generation to generation it shall lie waste, and none shall pass through it for ever and ever; but the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it, and the owl also and the raven; and there shall the vultures be gathered; and he shall stretch forth upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness. They shall call forth the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And there shall come up in her palaces nettles, and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be a habitation for dragons, and a court for owls.'-Isaiah, xxxiv.

8-15.

'Lo, I will make thee, Edom, small among the heathen, and despise d amongst men. Thy terribleness has deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the ROCK, whose habitation is high; though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord. Edom shall be a desolation, and every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and no man shall abide there.'-Jer. xlix. 15-18.

These and similar prophecies we have long read in the sacred books, without having any definite idea either of what or where the capital of Edom itself was, or the precise import of theseas they seemed, general-denunciations. Even Bishop Newton, though he refers to all the texts, can say no more on the subject than

'We know little more of the history of the Edomites than as it is connected with the Jews; and where is the name and nation now? They were swallowed up and lost partly among the Nabathean Arabs, and partly among the Jews; and the very name was abolished and disused.'-p. 43.

Bishop Lowth, in his Commentary on Isaiah, confesses that the evidence then in existence as to Edom

'seemed by no means to come up to the terms of the prophecy, or to justify so high-wrought and terrible a description-it seems then, that Edom being put, by a common figure, for God's enemies in general, the prophecy may have a further view to events still future,' &c.And several other commentators profess themselves at a loss to account for some of such extraordinary expressions as 'the lines of confusion and the stones of emptiness,' &c. Here then was a prophecy which, even so late as the days of Newton and Lowth, was confessed to be in an unsatisfactory if not unintelligible state. It was indeed one of those prophecies to which Hume or Collins might have consented to appeal.

Now

Now mark the sequel. Volney was the first of modern writers to notice the tract formerly called Edom-he did not pass through it-for this once great thoroughfare was no longer practicable.

'The

'No traveller,' he says, ' has yet visited it, but it well merits such an attention, for, from the report of the Arabs, there are to the southeast of the Red Sea, within three days' journey, upwards of thirty ruined towns absolutely deserted' (thy cities shall be desolate). Arabs sometimes make use of the ruins to fold their cattle, but in general avoid them on account of the enormous scorpions*. We cannot be surprised at these traces of ancient population, when we recollect that these districts enjoyed a considerable share of the commerce of Arabia and India.'-Volney, ap. Keith.

But now not even a traveller can visit Idumæa without extreme difficulty and danger-(and none shall pass through it). Volney did not pass through it any more than other subsequent travellers who attest its utter desolation. Burckhardt and Seetzen, however, did: 'they are,' says Dr. Keith, the only travellers who as yet have passed through it, and they-according to the prophecyhave been cut off. We cannot either assent to or approve of Dr. Keith's carrying the letter of the prophecy so far as to see in the fate of Burckhardt and Seetzen-the only persons who, as he chooses to say, passed through-the continued effect of the prophecy. Burckhardt and Seetzen passed through it no more than their successors have done, and they died long after in distant countries; the words evidently have no such meaning as Dr. Keith would strain them to they applied to the Edomites, and have been accomplished:-and, once for all we say, and this will answer many of Dr. Keith's observations, that it would not in our opinion at all affect the accuracy of the prophecy, if the valley of Edom were hereafter to become-as it perhaps may-as frequented by travellers as the valley of Chamouni. Burckhardt's account, however, does certainly corroborate the words of the prophecy down to very minute particulars. He describes the ruins of many large and some stately towns, scattered through a country which may be with great propriety called a stony desert--although susceptible of culture-and which must have been once thickly inhabited. At present, all this country is a desert, and Maan (Temán) is the only inhabited place in it' (Burckhardt, p. 431 et seq.)-(I will make it desolate from Teman). In the centre of this desert, the geographers of antiquity had led us to suppose that Sela (by the Greeks called Petra, both signifying the Rock), the capital of

* Creatures, probably, of the same class as those translated drugons, serpents, fury serpents.-Is. xxxiv. 15; Numb. xxi. 6; Deut. viii. 15. Laborde states that they are still called fiery scorpions, from the extreme inflammation caused by their bite. How every little detail corroborates the Scriptures!

Idumæa,

Idumæa, had once been, but no one had ever heard or imagined that the remains of any such place were in existence, till Burckhardt stumbled upon a desolate city exhibiting the most curious remains of art. It stands in a narrow valley, surrounded by enormous perpendicular rocks, in the clefts of which have been wrought caves or chambers which Burckhardt-who seems to have known, and certainly to have thought, nothing about the Idumæan prophecies-calls sepulchres; subsequent travellers see that many of them were residences. These excavations are found at all heights -from the level of the valley up to an elevation in the clefts of the rock which appears utterly inaccessible

O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill; though thou shouldst build thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down.'

After Burckhardt, Messrs. Bankes and Legh, and Captains Irby and Mangles, in 1818, made a joint excursion to this scene of wonders, this monumental miracle. The account of the country through which they passed, and the toils and the perils they encountered, are a striking commentary on several points of the prophecy, which we have not room to extract; but the wonder of wonders is the city of Petra itself, situated in a defile now called Wady Mousa, to which, with great difficulty and danger, they penetrated, and where they were permitted to make a sojourn so short and so anxious that, though it gratified in a high degree, it also disappointed their curiosity. Burckhardt had already given a cursory account of this extraordinary place, with its sepulchres, colonnades, pyramids, mausoleums, and a theatre, with all its benches, capable of containing 3000 spectators, all cut out of the rock; while the ground was covered with heaps of huge stones strewed over the foundations of long lines of buildings, fragments of columns, and vestiges of paved streets-(the lines of confusion, and the stones of emptiness). Mr. Legh's account, published by Dr. Macmichael, and that of Captains Irby and Mangles, more

than confirm all this

'On entering the pass which conducts to the theatre of Petra, they remark:-"The ruins of the city here burst on the view, in their full grandeur, shut in on the opposite side by barren craggy precipices from which numerous ravines and valleys branch out in all directions; the sides of the mountains covered with an endless variety of excavated tombs and private dwellings, (0 thou that dwellest in the clefts of THE ROCK, &c.-Jer. xlix. 16,) presented altogether the most singular scene we ever beheld."

'A narrow and circuitous defile, surrounded on each side by precipitous or perpendicular rocks, varying from four hundred to seven hundred feet in altitude, and forming, for two miles, "a sort of subterranean passage," opens on the east the way to the ruins of Petra. The rocks,

or

or rather hills, then diverge on either side, and leave an oblong space, where once stood the metropolis of Edom, deceived by its terribleness, where now lies a waste of ruins, encircled on every side, save on the north-east alone, by stupendous cliffs, which still show how the pride and labour of art tried there to vie with the sublimity of nature.

Tombs present themselves, not only in every avenue to the city, and upon every precipice that surrounds it, but even intermixed almost promiscuously with its public and domestic edifices; the natural features of the defile grew more and more imposing at every step, and the excavations and sculpture more frequent on both sides, till it presented at last a continued street of tombs. The base of the cliffs wrought out in all the symmetry and regularity of art, with colonnades, and pedestals, and ranges of corridors adhering to the perpendicular surface; flights of steps chiselled out of the rock; grottos in great numbers, which are certainly not sepulchral; some excavated residences of large dimensions, (in one of which is a single chamber, sixty feet in length, and of a breadth proportioned;) many other dwellings of inferior note, particularly abundant in one defile leading to the city, the steep sides of which contain a sort of excavated suburb, accessible by flights of steps; niches, sometimes thirty feet in excavated height, with altars for votive offerings, or with pyramids, columns, or obelisks; a bridge across a chasm now apparently inaccessible; some small pyramids hewn out of the rock on the summit of the heights; horizontal grooves, for the conveyance of water, cut in the face of the rock, and even across the architectural fronts of some of the excavations; and, in short, "the rocks hollowed out into innumerable chambers of different dimensions, whose entrances are variously, richly, and often fantastically decorated with every imaginable order of architecture"-all united, not only form one of the most singular scenes that the eye of man ever looked upon, or the imagination painted-a group of wonders perhaps unparalleled in their kind-but also give indubitable proof, both that in the land of Edom there was a city where human ingenuity, and energy, and power, must have been exerted for many ages, and to so great a degree as to have well entitled it to be noted for its strength or terribleness, and that the description given of it by the prophets of Israel was as strictly literal as the prediction respecting it is true. "The barren state of the country, together with the desolate condition of the city, without a single human being living near it, seem," in the words of those who were spectators of the scene, strongly to verify the judgment denounced against it." O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, &c. -also Edom shall be a desolation, &c.'-Irby and Mangles, p. 405; Keith, pp. 186-190.

Nor are there wanting some slighter touches to complete the prophetic picture—

The screaming of the eagles, hawks, and owls, which were soaring above their heads in considerable numbers, seemingly annoyed at any

one

one approaching their lonely habitation, added much to the singularity of the scene. The fields in the immediate vicinity of Edom are, according to the observation of Burckhardt, "frequented by an immense number of crows."—Keith, p. 205.

In short, there seems to be hardly an expression, however vague or metaphorical it may have appeared in the long series of Idumæan prophecy, which has not received from the concurrent testimony of all the travellers (the earlier of whom had no idea whatsoever that they were commenting a prophecy) a confirmation, conclusive in all its great features, and so exceedingly curious and accurate in some even of the smallest details and most literal expressions-that though we should not rely on such verbal coincidences, we cannot but admit that they are really wonderful. But while Dr. Keith was exhibiting in his later editions these extraordinary corroborations of his views, he received from Paris('O! would,' as he says, that that city would give heed to the truth which it thus affords the means of confirming !')—he received the six first livraisons of the Voyage de l'Arabie Pétrée, par MM. Léon de Laborde et Linant *,' illustrated with splendid engravings of the ruins of Petra,

In which,' as Dr. Keith truly observes, by merely affixing a text, the beauties of art become immediately subservient to the interests of religion. Where, very recently, it was difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain a single fact, and where only indirect evidence could be obtained, men may now, as it were, look upon Idumæa, and see how the lines of confusion and the stones of emptiness have been stretched over it. And we may now, in like manner, look upon the ruins of the chief city of Edom, of which the very existence was, till lately, altogether unknown. All the plates attest its vast magnificence, and the almost incredible and inconceivable labour, continued as it must have been from age to age, prior to the days of Moses and later than the Christian era-by which so great a multiplicity of dwellings, tombs, and temples were excavated from the rock.'-pp. 192, 193.

We have ourselves examined this work, and profess ourselves, however struck with the beauty and curiosity of the scenes which it represents, to be still more delighted with this revival of the lost capital of Idumæa, and the unexpected and decisive, and we may add, eternal proof that is thus established of that one of the prophecies, which twenty years ago was perhaps the least intelligible even to the learned. We cannot refrain from adding two or three small instances in which this last publication corroborates

*Voyage de l'Arabie Pétrée. Par MM. Léon de Laborde et Linant. Folio. Livraisons I. to XII. Paris.' We have heard that a translation of this work is now in the press. The reader will also find two very beautiful engravings of the ruins of Petra in Finden's Landscape Illustrations of the Bible, or in the Biblical Keepsake for 1834, pp. 39 and 101.

the