Obadiah
Author: Obadiah
Obadiah is a single oracle against Edom for violence done to his brother Jacob in the day of Judah’s distress.
Outline
Pride of the clefts (1–9)
Edom trusts the height of his dwelling, and the Lord says he will be brought down.
The day of Jacob’s trouble (10–14)
Edom is charged with standing aside, rejoicing, and cutting off fugitives.
The day of the Lord (15–21)
The nations drink the judgment they poured, and the kingdom becomes the Lord’s.
Key verses
Obadiah 1:3
Edom is told that the pride of his heart has deceived him.
Obadiah 1:12
He should not have looked on his brother in the day of his disaster.
Obadiah 1:21
Deliverers go up on Mount Zion, and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.
Obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament, and it is one oracle, not a collection. The addressee is Edom, the people descended from Esau, and the occasion is what Edom did when Judah was broken. The prophet does not tell a long story of that day. He assumes the reader can see Jerusalem’s calamity and can see a brother people using it. The word of the Lord says a messenger has gone among the nations. Rise, and let us rise against her. Edom, who lives in the clefts of the rock and says in his heart that no one can bring him down, is told that though he exalts himself as the eagle and sets his nest among the stars, the Lord will bring him down.
The pride is geographical and moral at once. Sela and the high country made Edom feel untouchable. Obadiah says the treasures will be searched out and the mighty men will be dismayed. Allies will deceive him. The men of his confederacy will set a trap. The wise men of Teman, a proverbial wisdom, will be destroyed. Understanding will fail. The book spends its first movement taking away the things Edom trusted: height, wealth, treaties, and wisdom. None of them is the Lord, and none of them holds when the Lord is the one who has sent the word.
The charge is then stated in the language of a brother. For your violence against your brother Jacob, shame will cover you. In the day that you stood on the other side, in the day that strangers carried away his wealth and foreigners entered his gates, you were as one of them. You should not have looked. You should not have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction. You should not have spoken proudly. You should not have entered the gate, looted the goods, or stood at the crossroads to cut off the fugitives and deliver up the survivors. The list is specific because gloating and active betrayal are both in view. Edom did not have to swing the first sword to be charged. Standing at the fork and handing the escaped back was enough.
The day of the Lord is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you. Your dealing will return on your own head. The nations drink continually, and they will be as though they had never been. But upon Mount Zion there will be deliverance, and it will be holy. The house of Jacob will possess its own possessions. The book ends with deliverers going up on Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s. Obadiah’s size is not a thinner message. It is the whole case against a people who used a brother’s collapse, and the claim that the last government of that day belongs to the Lord rather than to the nation that hid in the rocks.