The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?
Thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock - (Song of Solomon 2:14, "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places the stairs;" Jeremiah 48:28, as to Moab, "Dwell in the rock, and be like the dove that maketh her nest in the sides of the hole's mouth"). The cities of Edom, and among them Petra (Hebrew, cela` (H5553), meaning rock, 2 Kings 14:7, margin), the capital in the Wady Musa, consisted of houses mostly cut in the rocks. 'Petra is entirely shut out by the intervening rocks ... The great feature of the mountains of Edom is the mass of red bald-headed sandstone rocks, intersected, not by valleys, but by deep seams. In the heart of these rocks, itself invisible, lies Petra' (Stanley). Petra is unique. 'The whole Edomite country from Eleutheropolis to Petra and Selah hath small habitations (habitatiunculas) in caves; and on account of the oppressive heat of the sun, as being a southern province, hath underground cottages' (Jerome). Hence, the aborigines whom Edom expelled were called Horites -
i.e., dwellers in caves.