It is not a matter of a few losses that may be made up again another day. “If thieves came to thee, if robbers by night, (how art thou cut off!) would they not have stolen till they had enough? if the grape gatherers came to thee, would they not leave some grapes?” It is not a matter of loss for some things would remain. It is a far more serious matter entirely. It is a matter of annihilation. This prophecy is one of complete doom, of woe upon woe. (“How art thou cut off!”) It is an exclamation, as though the prophet for a moment caught a glimpse of the immensity of the disaster. It is in contrast to the high living of the previous verses, the exaltation and the pride symbolised by the eagle and the stars. “How are the things of Esau searched out! how are his hidden things sought up!” As long as we were a God-fearing people God honored us, but when we turned away from God to rely on the arm of flesh alone, – Esau – our weaknesses are discovered one by one. The prophecy details the downfall and then tells us the reason for it. “How are the things of Esau searched out!”…. And the next three verses tell us how. But what we should know is that God is against us where formerly He was for us, because we have forsaken Him in our search for materialistic progress and knowledge. Who will bring us down to the ground? “I will bring thee down, saith the Lord.” It is not a matter of some material losses, for if only robbers robbed us we have enough assets to offset our losses, but how art thou cast off! The prophecy is grimly foreboding!
“All the men of thy confederacy have brought thee even to the border.” We are on the verge of ruin. Has some enemy come against us? No. The damage has come from inside our own borders. “The men that were at peace with thee have deceived thee, and prevailed against thee.” No enemy has come upon us to destroy us, for then we would fight, but those who were at peace with us have deceived us. Our leaders have deceived us, our teachers have deceived us, our ‘prophets’ have deceived us. They are the ‘enemy’ within our borders, and they have prevailed against us. The damage is done, our decline is unalterable, our greatness already gone. No outside force came against us, no nation overthrew us, no heathen horde brought about our calamity. The men of our own confederacy, the men that were at peace with us, they have so misled us and deceived us as to ruin us. “They that eat thy bread have laid a wound under thee.” Without a blow being struck we are sore wounded already – from within. “There is none understanding in him.” But alas! Esau does not understand. The natural mind is in great darkness, having forsaken the light of the gospel, and, turning from God, has lost all understanding of the events of this life and the next. No one appears to understand how we are fallen, whence we are fallen, nor why we are fallen. We but dimly comprehend that somewhere along the way we went wrong, we lost our momentum that was carrying us up and on, but how or why or where or when we lost it is a mystery to the mind of flesh unenlightened by the wisdom of God.
Who were our leaders, teachers, prophets? Were they not wise men, men of great knowledge and ability, men of vast capacity and understanding? Were our people so poor and uneducated as to allow this in ignorance? No! Our people were neither poor nor uneducated, and our leaders, teachers, and prophets could all read. But no one thought to read what God had said and taught. Was God not dead? Why should we turn to myths and legends when we had all this new knowledge, so vastly superior to that of the ancients? Read now what God said long ago. “Shall I not in that day, saith the Lord, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau?” The natural mind refuses the wisdom of God: therefore God in His wisdom takes away from the natural mind the light wherewith He once enlightened us. Africa, the so-called dark continent, sends its missionaries to America, the once enlightened nation. Why? “Shall I not in that day, saith the Lord, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau?” It is as if men discovering electricity should refuse to allow the light of the sun to shine upon them. Who needs it? they cry. So they turn to their own resources and to darkness, until presently the knowledge of the heavens is lost among them. So the natural mind, not wishing to allow the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ to shine there, has turned to newer knowledge as a more human resource, and lost the wisdom and understanding of previous days.
