But I will send a fire upon Teman
A principal city of Edom or Idumea, so called from Teman a grandson of Esau, ( Genesis 36:11 ) . Jerom F24 says there was in his time a village called Theman, five miles distant from the city Petra, and had a Roman garrison; and so says Eusebius F25; who places it in Arabia Petraea; it is put for the whole country; it signifies the south. So the Targum renders it,
``a fire in the south.''The "fire" signifies an enemy that should be sent into it, and destroy it: this was Nebuchadnezzar, who, as Josephus F26 says, five years after the destruction of Jerusalem led his army into Coelesyria, and took it; and fought against the Ammonites and Moabites, and very probably at the same time against the Edomites: which shall devour the palaces of Bozrah;
``Hereupon Judas and his host turned suddenly by the way of the wilderness unto Bosora; and when he had won the city, he slew all the males with the edge of the sword, and took all their spoils, and burned the city with fire,'' (1 Maccabees 5:28)It was afterwards rebuilt, and became a considerable city; in the time of the above Persian geographer F4, it had a very strong castle belonging to it, a gate twenty cubits high, and one of the largest basins or pools of water in all the east. In the fourth century there were bishops of this place, which assisted in the councils of Nice, Antioch, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, as Reland F5 observes; though he thinks that Bostra is not to be confounded with the Bezer of Reuben, or with the Bozra of Moab and Edom; though they seem to be all one and the same place.