Summary: Bible - Book of Obadiah

The GIST

Obadiah is a single chapter of twenty-one verses, 440 words in Hebrew, the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible. It has one subject and one target. It is a vision of judgment on Edom, a mountain-dwelling nation and Judah's neighbor, for what Edom did on the day Jerusalem fell. When foreign armies broke into the city, the Edomites, Judah's nearest kin among the nations, stood by, cheered, joined the looting and hunted down those who tried to flee. Obadiah announces that the same will be done to them, and that the kingdom they mocked will rise again.

Nothing is known about the prophet. The book gives no father's name, no hometown and no king's reign, only the title, "The vision of Obadiah." Most scholars place it shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. It stands among the twelve Minor Prophets, and for all its brevity it states with unusual clarity an idea found throughout the prophets, the day of the LORD on which every nation is repaid in kind.

What It Says

The summons (verse 1). The book opens with news from heaven. A report has come from the LORD, and a messenger has been sent among the nations with a call to arms: "Arise ye, and let us rise up against her in battle." Edom's enemies are being mustered, and behind them is God.

Pride in the heights (verses 2 to 4). Edom's land was a country of crags and high places, and its people thought themselves beyond reach. Obadiah goes straight for that confidence. "The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high." Edom says in its heart, "Who shall bring me down to the ground?" The answer is one of the great images of fallen pride in Scripture: "Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD." The nation that thinks itself great is to be made small and despised.

Stripped bare (verses 5 and 6). The prophet reaches for two comparisons to show how complete the ruin will be. Thieves who break in at night take only what they want. Grape pickers leave some fruit on the vine. Edom will not be so lucky. "How are the things of Esau searched out! how are his hidden things sought up!" Even what was hidden away will be found and carried off.

Betrayed by friends (verse 7). There is a bitter fitness in the next detail. Edom, which betrayed its brother, will be betrayed by its allies. The men of its confederacy will drive it to the border. Those who were at peace with it, even those who ate its bread, will deceive it and set a trap under its feet, and Edom will not see it coming.

Wisdom and strength fail (verses 8 and 9). Edom, it appears, was proud of its wise men and its warriors. Neither will help. God will destroy the wise out of Edom and understanding out of the mount of Esau, and the mighty men of Teman will be dismayed, until everyone is cut off.

The charge (verses 10 to 14). Only now does the book say what Edom did, and the accusation is framed as a family matter. Edom is Esau, and Judah is Jacob; the two nations traced themselves to two brothers. "For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever."

The indictment moves by stages, from passive to active. First Edom stood aside: on the day strangers carried off Jerusalem's forces and foreigners entered its gates and cast lots for the city, "even thou wast as one of them." Then come eight reproaches, each beginning with the same words, thou shouldest not, and the phrase "in the day" tolls through them like a bell. Edom should not have gazed on its brother's disaster. It should not have rejoiced over the people of Judah on the day they were destroyed. It should not have talked big on the day of distress. It should not have entered the gate of God's people on the day of their calamity. It should not have laid hands on their goods. And worst of all: "Neither shouldest thou have stood in the crossway, to cut off those of his that did escape; neither shouldest thou have delivered up those of his that did remain in the day of distress." The Edomites waited at the crossroads for refugees and handed the survivors over.

The day of the LORD (verses 15 and 16). From Edom the vision widens to the whole world. "For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head." This is the principle of the book in a single sentence. Edom's fate is one instance of a universal reckoning. As Judah's enemies drank in triumph on God's holy mountain, so all the nations will drink, and drink, until they are as though they had never been.

Zion restored (verses 17 to 21). The last verses turn to the future of the people Edom thought finished. "But upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." The image is reversed: Jacob will be the fire, Joseph the flame, and the house of Esau the stubble. The exiles will come back and spread out in every direction, into the south and the mount of Esau, the lowland of the Philistines, the fields of Ephraim and Samaria, and Gilead. Even the captives of Jerusalem living in a far place called Sepharad will return to hold the cities of the south. The book ends by looking past both nations to the one who rules them: "And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the LORD's."

Why It Matters

Obadiah is a book about what we owe to those closest to us when they fall. The crime it names is not conquest. Babylon did the conquering. Edom's offense was to watch a brother's ruin with satisfaction and then to profit from it. The progression the prophet traces, from standing aloof, to gloating, to looting, to betraying the fugitives, is a study in how complicity deepens. Its most uncomfortable verse may be the first of the charges, since it condemns people who did nothing at all: you stood on the other side, and that made you one of them.

It is also a book about pride. Edom trusted its cliffs, its alliances, its sages and its soldiers, and Obadiah takes these away one at a time. The eagle's nest among the stars has become a lasting picture of the security that power imagines for itself.

And it states the rule of measure for measure as plainly as any text in the Bible: as you have done, it will be done to you. The theme of the day of the LORD connects this small book to the larger prophets. The same expression appears in Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Zephaniah and Malachi, and it is taken up in the New Testament.

The rivalry behind the book is old. In Israel's telling, Edom descended from Esau and Israel from his brother Jacob, and for much of Judah's history Edom was its vassal. That background explains the heat of the language. It also raises questions for modern readers, who may be uneasy with a text that looks forward to a neighbor's annihilation. The book's own last line points to how it wants to be read: as an assurance that cruelty and betrayal do not go unanswered, and that the final word belongs to God's rule and not to any nation's.

On its date, scholars are not unanimous. Because the book says nothing about its author, everything depends on identifying the disaster it describes. Some have connected it with an attack on Jerusalem in the ninth century BCE, which would make Obadiah a contemporary of Elijah. The near consensus favors the Babylonian destruction of 587 BCE, which would make him a contemporary of Jeremiah. The first part of the book closely resembles a passage about Edom in Jeremiah 49, and it is thought likely that both drew on an older source. Other scholars think the book grew over time and reflects later conflicts between the Jewish province and the Edomites in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.

Who Should Read It

Read Obadiah in five minutes, and then again slowly. It is ideal for anyone who wants to sample the prophets in a short space, and its moral is uncomfortably portable: it applies wherever people take quiet pleasure in a rival's misfortune or look away while someone they should have defended is harmed. Readers interested in the long story of Jacob and Esau will find here one of its last and darkest chapters.