None shall pass through it forever and ever. There was a literal fulfillment of the prophecies against Edom to a considerable extent. Malachi, writing three hundred years after Isaiah, says that the "mountains and the heritage of Esau were laid waste for the dragons of the wilderness" (Malachi 1:3); and he makes the Edomites themselves exclaim, "We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places" (Isaiah 1:4).
A certain amount of recovery must have followed; and in the Maccabee period Edom appears once more as an adversary of Israel, and an adversary of some importance (1 Macc. 5:3, 65). Gradually, however, she had to yield to the superior power of Judaea, and was even ruled by viceroys, whom the Maccabee princes nominated.
One of these, Antipater, was the father of Herod the Great. From his time Idumea languished until, in the seventh century after Christ, it was overrun dud conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs, who completed its ruin.
It is now, and has been for above a thousand years, one of the most desolate tracts upon the earth's surface.