Thy terribleness hath deceived thee. — The substantive does not occur elsewhere. Etymo-logically it may mean “terror of,” or “object of terror;” but a cognate word is found in 1 Kings 15:13; 2 Chronicles 15:16 in the sense of an “idol,” probably of the Phallic or Priapus type, and that is probably the meaning. Such an idol is called scornfully the horror of Edom, just as the God of Israel was “the fear of Isaac” (Genesis 31:42). So Milton speaks of Chemosh as the “obscene dread of Moab’s sons” (Par. Lost, I. 406.)
O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock. — Better, perhaps, in the fortresses of Sela. The words describe with a wonderful vividness the aspect of the rock-fortresses of Edom, the cities built into a ravine. The remains of Petra (the Sela of 2 Kings 14:7; Isaiah 16:1), commonly referred to as illustrating this description, are, it must be remembered, of Roman origin; but there can be little doubt that it occupied the site of an earlier city, and that there were other fortresses, even more like the eagle’s nest, perched upon the summit of the crags. In Job 39:27-30 we have a picture of the eagle’s nest drawn by a writer who was probably familiar with these rock fortresses.