(8) From Idumaea.--The only passage in the New Testament in which this country is named. It had acquired a considerably wider range than the Edom of the Old Testament, and included the whole country between the Arabah and the Mediterranean. It was at this time under the government of Aretas (2Corinthians 11:32), the father of the wife whom Herod Antipas had divorced, and this had probably brought about a more frequent intercourse between its inhabitants and those of Galilee and Peraea.

They about Tyre and Sidon.--The fact is interesting in its connection with the history of the Syro-Ph?nician woman (Matthew 15:21; Mark 7:24) as showing how it was that our Lord's appearance in that region was welcomed as that of one whose fame had travelled thither before Him.

3:6-12 All our sicknesses and calamities spring from the anger of God against our sins. Their removal, or the making them blessings to us, was purchased to us by the blood of Christ. But the plagues and diseases of our souls, of our hearts, are chiefly to be dreaded; and He can heal them also by a word. May more and more press to Christ to be healed of these plagues, and to be delivered from the enemies of their souls.And from Jerusalem,.... The metropolis of the country of Judea;

and from Idumea, or Edom, as the Syriac version reads it; a country that lay on the south of Judea, formerly inhabited by the sons of Edom, but now by Jews; or at least the inhabitants of it were proselytes to the Jewish religion. Mention is made of the plains of Idumea, along with Gazera, Azotus, and Jamnia, as in 1:Maccabees:

"Howbeit all the hindmost of them were slain with the sword: for they pursued them unto Gazera, and unto the plains of Idumea, and Azotus, and Jamnia, so that there were slain of them upon a three thousand men.'' (1 Maccabees 4:15)

Pliny (t) speaks of Idumea and Judea together, as a part of Syria; and Ptolemy says (u), this country lies on the west of the river Jordan; and it is here added,

and from beyond Jordan; the country of Peraea, on the east of Jordan:

and they about Tyre and Sidon; either the inhabitants of these places, as the Syriac, Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic versions favour, reading "a great company from Tyre and Sidon"; or those that lived near the borders, and upon the confines of these cities of Phoenicia:

a great multitude; when all met together, from these several parts; who

when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him: for his fame went through all the countries, for the miracles he wrought; which drew this vast concourse of people after him; and who, inquiring where he was, came to him at the sea of Galilee.

(t) Nat. Hist. l. 5. c. 12. (u) Geograph. l. 5. c. 16.