Idumea

The place-name Idumea has both a literal and a symbolic meaning. In the Old Testament it is another name for Edom, the land south of Israel occupied by the descendants of Esau, Jacob’s brother (Genesis 32:3; 36:9; Deuteronomy 2:5, 12, 22). In the three passages where the King James Old Testament uses Idumea (Isaiah 34:5–6; Ezekiel 35:15; 36:5), the Hebrew text uses Edom. In the New Testament (Mark 3:8) Idumea refers to a smaller region immediately south of the district of Judea and not to the entire Edomite territory of earlier times.

King Herod the Great was from Idumea and thus seems to have been viewed with suspicion by Jews because the district of Idumea had been forced to convert to Judaism by the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus (135–104 b.c.). According to Josephus (13:257–58), Herod was, therefore, called a “half-Jew” by some (14:403–4).

Symbolically, because the Edomites, or Idumeans, were a wicked, non-Israelite group of people, their territory came to symbolize the world and its wicked ways. For Isaiah, Edom or Idumea represented all the enemies of God and his people. Therefore, when talking about the judgments that would descend upon the nations of the world at the second coming of Jesus Christ, the prophet specifically described how the sword of the Lord would fall upon Edom/Idumea with a great slaughter (Isaiah 34:5–6). Likewise, in this dispensation the Lord uses Idumea as a great symbol of worldliness and wickedness: “And [he] shall come down in judgment upon Idumea, or the world” (D&C 1:36).

Source

Josephus, Flavius. Jewish Antiquities. Translated by Ralph Marcus and Allen Wikgren. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.

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