In Isaiah, chapter twenty-one, verse eleven, Dumah is an alternate name for Edom, the land of Esau’s descendants. Edom was located immediately south of Judah and the Dead Sea. Several places of the name are mentioned in the Old Testament, as in Genesis twenty-five, verse fourteen, “And Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa,” and “Arab, and Dumah, and Eshean,”but these are not in the direction of Seir.
The subject is indefinite: one calleth. The watchman hears the silence of the night broken by a voice from Seir. It is probable that the prophet had actually been consulted by the Edomites, and that this is his answer to their enquiries. The cry is, “Watchman, what part of the night?” In the weary night of calamity, the sufferer desires to know what hour it is, how much of the darkness. Still, it remains to be lived through. The answer is mysterious and ill-boding. There is a “morning” coming, a time of light and hope, but the day, which is so opened, closes too quickly in the blackness of night as in Amos five, verse eighteen. The words sum up the whole future of Edom, subject as it was to one conqueror after another, rising now and then, as under Herod and the Romans, and then sinking to its present desolation.
According to this general view of the passage, Watchman (the prophet), either seriously or in scorn, because the prophets were so called by God and by the people of the Jews. What of the night means – What have you certain to tell us of the state of the night? How far is it advanced? Do you observe no signs of the approach of the morning? That is, what do you observe of our present distress and calamity? Is there any appearance of its departure, and of the approach of the morning of deliverance?