In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers carried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou [wast] as one of them.
Ver. 11. In the day that thou stoodest on the other side] Over beside, curiously eyeing and maliciously promoting, by thy virulent tongue and violent hands, the downfal of Israel. Nemo curiosus quin malevolus, saith an ancient. These Edomites fed their eyes with their brethren's miseries, as with a pleasant spectacle. At first perhaps they were only onlookers, but afterwards they "stood against them in battle" (when they saw them worsted) and took part with their enemies. See Est 8:2 Psa 9:6 Ephesians 6:11. The Samaritans afterwards served them in like sort, as Josephus reporteth; especially when Antiochus tormented the Jews, they wrote to him to excuse themselves as no Jews; and (offering him their service) basely styled him Antiochus, the mighty God.
In the day that the strangers carried away captive, &c.] Edom's malice is here aggravated by the circumstance of time they took to express it; viz. when God's people were at worst, and when their extreme misery should have moved pity. This was a dog-like, devil-like practice, to fall upon those that are down before; "to add affliction to the afflicted," Psalms 69:26; to push the wounded out of the herd, as they say deer do. Of such barbarous and savage usage David often complaineth, and Job, and Jeremiah, and Jesus, Psalms 22:1,31; such shall one day cry out at God's bar, as Joseph's brethren did, Genesis 42:21, and find no mercy, James 2:21, no more than cruel Haman did, Esther 7:10, it being just with God to set off all hearts from him who had been so unreasonably merciless. This Job well knew, and therefore so studiously purgeth himself of this heinous wickedness, Job 31:29. Ausonius also out of Pittacus Mytilenaeus affirmeth him to be a beast and worse that maketh himself merry in another man's misery. The beastliest among brute creatures, even swine, seem to be affected with the outcries of their kind. Men only, more brutish than they, triumph in the calamities of each other, and are not moved with their outcries, albeit as bitter as that of Hezekiah, Isaiah 38:14, "O Lord, I am oppressed, help me." This Solomon calleth oppression of a high nature, Ecclesiastes 4:1; see Psalms 142:4 .
And foreigners entered into his gates] Having taken the city; then did the Edomites set fire to the temple, 1Esther 4:45. Citizens in a siege fortify their gates, and defend them to the utmost; for if the gates be gained the city is lost; as it was at Jerusalem, and as it had like to have been at the city of Coccinum, in the island of Lemnos, which the Turks had surprised suddenly, but that they were happily prevented by the courage of one Marulla, a maiden of that city, who seeing her father slain in the gate, took up the weapons that lay by him, and like a fierce Amazon, notably revenged his death, desperately fighting in defence of her country with those few that were in the gate at the first, and so kept the Turks out until the rest of the citizens, moved with the alarm, came to the gate.
And cast lots upon Jerusalem] i.e. upon the plunder of Jerusalem; according to the custom of old soldiers, Numbers 26:56. See this fulfilled 2 Kings 24:13,14; 2Ki 25:13-17 See also more of this practice, Nah 3:10 Joel 3:3; and how grievous it is to the ingenuous, hear Andromache (Virg. Aeneid. III 323),
“ O foelix una ante alias Priameia virgo,
Hostilem ad tumulum, Troiae sub moenibus altis
Iussa mort, quae sortitus non pertulit ullos,
Nec victoris heri tetigit captiva cubile. ”
Even thou wast as one of them ] The emphasis lieth in the word "thou"; as in that of Julius Caesar, beholding Brutus among the conspirators that took away his life, What? Thou my son Brutus? Kαι συ τεκνον βρουτε (Dio Cass.). Even thou, brother Edom, whom we spared in our passage through the wilderness, when we destroyed other nations, Deuteronomy 2:5 ; thou, who hast from David's days, for the most part, been our vassal and tributary. Jerome applieth this to heretics; Mercer, to that arch-heretic antichrist, an utter opposite to Christ, yet a pretended friend, as was Judas; a servant of God's servants (if you will believe him), but a most bloody persecutor of the Church, in whose ruins he yet revelleth, and will do, till Christ shall punish him, with "his sore, and great, and strong sword," Isaiah 27:2 , and dung his vineyard with the flesh of that wild boar.