The nation descended from Esau, twin brother of Jacob (Gen 25:30: Therefore was his name called Edom, from Hebrew adom, red, after the red lentil pottage for which he sold his birthright). Edom settled the rocky mountainous region south of the Dead Sea, around the great city Petra. The relationship between Israel and Edom was perpetually antagonistic. Edom refused Israel passage during the wilderness wandering (Num 20:14-21). Saul and David warred with Edom (1 Sam 14:47; 2 Sam 8:13-14). Solomon's mines were in Edomite territory. After Judah's fall in 586 BC, the Edomites celebrated and helped the Babylonians plunder — the offense that prompted Obadiah's entire prophecy against them. The Edomites later moved north and became the Idumeans of the intertestamental period; Herod the Great was an Idumean — an Edomite ruling Israel under Roman authority. By the second century AD Edom as a distinct people ceased to exist, fulfilling the prophetic judgments of Obadiah, Isaiah 34, Jeremiah 49, and Ezekiel 25.