In the day when you stood off on the side, in the day when strangers took his military force into captivity and when outright foreigners entered his gate and over Jerusalem they cast lots, you also were like one of them.”​—Obad. 10, 11.

More than two centuries later an especially vicious display of such hatred occurred when the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. Looking back on this event, the inspired psalmist wrote: “Remember, O Jehovah, regarding the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who were saying: ‘Lay it bare! Lay it bare to the foundation within it!’”​—Ps. 137:7.