Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen: thou art greatly despised.
Ver. 2. Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen] That is, vile, despicable, and abject, as Psalms 119:141, "I am small and despised." Nothing is more ordinary than to "despise the day of small things," Zechariah 4:10. And whereas God is said to be magnus in magnis, nec parvus in minimis, much in the greater neither little in the least, he had always kept down these profane Edomites, shutting them up in Mount Seir, a craggy barren country (not unlike Ascre, Hesiod's country, Aσκρη χειμα κακη θερος αργλαεη, ουδεποτ ' ειλη, or Llandaff in Wales, which is said to be a place neither pleasant, fertile, nor safe), and not suffering them to attain to any fame or almost name among other nations. Were it not that they are mentioned in the Bible (and never there for any goodness either) it would hardly have been known that there ever had been such a people. Wherefore, then, should Edom be so intolerably insolent, as Oba 1:3 ? swell to such a height of pride, play such bloody, pranks, as he is here accused of? espesially since God is taking a course to make him yet lesser and lower than yet he is, by those armies of his that are coming upon him, to stain the pride of all his glory, Isaiah 23:9 .