God brings calamity upon those guilty of violence against his people. What is the reason for the Edomites’ calamity? Repeated acts of violence against the sons of Jacob, their brothers. As descendants of Esau, the Edomites were related to the Israelites. Yet, they are charged with plundering their kin, rejoicing maliciously in Jerusalem’s fall, and climaxing this by handing survivors over to the enemy. Thus, Edom has sealed its doom.​—Verses 10-16.

○ Verse 10​—Edom was doomed to be “cut off to time indefinite” because of its caustic hatred and callous lack of natural affection for its brother nation, “the sons of Judah.” (Verse 12) Such national extinction meant that an Edomite state with a government and a population at a specific geographical location would disappear off the face of the earth. Today, there is no identifiable people of Edomite nationality; they have “become as though they had never happened to be.”​—Verse 16.