What is the context?
This brief message is headed against Dumah, and the caller speaks from Seir. The repeated question asks the watchman how much of the night remains. It sounds like a request for news or relief from a period of danger.
The answer gives no simple assurance that trouble is over. Morning comes, but night comes too. The caller is invited to inquire and return again.
The short exchange leaves much unexplained. Its urgency is clear, but it does not give a detailed timetable or identify all the events represented by morning and night.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Wesley connects Dumah with Edom because of Seir. He reads the exchange as people anxiously asking about danger, with the reply warning that relief will not remove every reason for further inquiry. The NABRE notes discuss Dumah as a north Arabian oasis while also identifying the caller with Edom.
Henry develops the passage as a call to make good use of an opportunity before another season of trouble. Gill includes an invitation to repentance in the closing words, alongside the ordinary sense of returning to ask again. The interpreters do not agree on one detailed sequence of events behind this short answer.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.