Isaiah 21:11

(11) The burden of Dumah.—Several places of the name are mentioned in the Old Testament (Genesis 25:14; Joshua 15:52), but these are not in the direction of Seir. Probably here, as in Isaiah 21:1 and Isaiah 22:1, we have a mystical prophetic name, Edom being altered to Dumah, i.e., “silence,” as in Psalms 94:17; Psalms 115:17, the silence of the grave. In this case, as in the preceding, there is first the oppressive silence of expectancy, and then of desolation.

He calleth . . . out of Seir . . .—The subject is indefinite: one calleth. The watchman hears the silence of the night broken by a voice from Seir. It is probable that the prophet had actually been consulted by the Edomites, and that this is his answer to their enquiries. The cry is, “Watchman, what part of the night?” In the weary night of calamity the sufferer desires to know what hour it is, how much of the darkness still remains to be lived through. The answer is mysterious and ill-boding. There is a “morning” coming, a time of light and hope, but the day which is so opened closes too quickly in the blackness of night (Amos 5:18). The words sum up the whole future of Edom, subject as it was to one conqueror after another, rising now and then, as under Herod and the Romans, and then sinking to its present desolation.