The Coming Destruction of Edom (vers. 1-14, 15b). 

        It should be noticed that almost certainly the two halves of ver. 15 have been transposed, perhaps through an early scribal misunderstanding of ver. 16. “As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee; thy dealing shall return upon thine own head” is the end of the judgment on Edom. The first half of the verse ushers in the second half of the prophecy.

        We have a play upon words in ver. 7; for the R.V. text see IISam. 3:21 (send away), for the R.V. mg. see Exod 6:1 (let go, i.e. drive out). The former is what one would expect from one’s confederates; the latter is the grim reality.

        The imperatives in ver. 12ff do not look to the future. Just as in the prophetic perfects of vers. 2, 6f the prophet is trans­ported to the future and sees the doom already completed, so here he is transported into the past and speaks as though the Edomite hostility against Jerusalem had not yet taken place.