The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?
Dumah - a tribe and region of Ishmael in Arabia (Genesis 25:14; 1 Chronicles 1:30), now called Dumah the Stony, situated on the confines of Arabia and the Syrian desert-a part put for the whole of Edom. Vitringa thinks "Dumah" (Hebrew, 'silence') is here used for Idumea, to imply it was soon to be reduced to silence, or destruction.
Seir - the principal mountain in Idumea, south of the Dead Sea, in Arabia Petres. "He calleth" ought to be rather, 'There is a call from Seir.'
To me - Isaiah. Even the wicked consult the Lord's ministers in times of calamity (2 Kings 3:12-13). So the pagan Balak and the ungodly Israelite king Ahaziah received such oracles from a true prophet, (cf. 2 Kings
1.)
Watchman - the prophet (Isaiah 62:6; Jeremiah 6:17): so called because, like a watchman on the look out from a tower, he announces future events which he sees in prophetic vision (Habakkuk 2:1-2).
What of the night? - what tidings have you to give as to the state of the night? Rather, 'what remains of the night?' How much of it is past (Maurer.) The Hebrew preposition, min (H4480), is often partitive: ( milayªlaah (H3915)) what portion of the night is there still? "Night" means calamity (Job 35:10; Micah 3:6), which then, in the wars between Egypt and Assyria, pressed sore on Edom. The repetition of the question marks the anxiety of the Idumeans.