Theopedia

Book of Obadiah

Overview

The Book of Obadiah is a single-chapter Old Testament prophecy pronouncing judgment on Edom, the nation descended from Esau, for its violence against Judah, its brother nation, and promising the eventual restoration of the kingdom to the LORD.1 It stands among the twelve minor prophets and is directed entirely at Edom, whose long-standing hostility toward Israel is likewise addressed in Ezekiel 25:12, 35:5-15, Joel 3:19, Amos 1:11, and at greater length in Jeremiah 49:7-22.1 Because of that hostility, Barrows observes, Edom stands in the prophecy “as the representatives of Zion’s enemies in all ages,” so that the judgment pronounced on this one nation carries a scope beyond itself.1

Author and Date

The book names its author only as Obadiah (Obad. 1:1); nothing else in the text identifies him, and no other Old Testament reference can be tied to him with confidence. Discussion of the book’s origin turns instead on when it was written. The whole question, as Barrows frames it, hangs on how verses 11-14 are read: they clearly allude to Edom’s exultation over the capture and plunder of Jerusalem, but whether this was the city’s final fall to the Chaldeans or an earlier sack is disputed.1 If the final Babylonian capture is meant, Obadiah wrote after the exile began; because the passage says nothing of Jerusalem’s burning, however, some place the allusion instead at an earlier capture of the city by the Philistines and Arabians in the reign of Jehoram (2 Chron. 21:16-17).1 Those favoring the earlier date point to Jeremiah’s extensive verbal overlap with Obadiah, arguing it is more likely that Jeremiah drew on the earlier prophet’s language than that both drew on a lost common source.1 Since Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldeans more than once before its final overthrow, Barrows notes, Obadiah could equally have referred to one of the earlier of those captures and still have written before Jeremiah composed his own oracle against Edom.1 The question remains genuinely unsettled.

Historical and Literary Context

Obadiah’s oracle answers a specific offense: when foreigners invaded Jerusalem, Edom did not merely stand aside but joined in, looting the city, cutting off fugitives at the mountain passes, and handing survivors over to the enemy (Obad. 1:11-14). Scripture elsewhere treats this hostility as an old family wrong rather than an isolated act, tracing Edom’s enmity back to Esau’s own hatred of Jacob (Gen. 27:41) and naming it repeatedly among the sins for which the nation stands condemned (Ezek. 25:12; 35:5-15; Amos 1:11).1 The prophecy’s brevity is itself characteristic of its kind: alongside Nahum, Obadiah is one of the shortest units in the Book of the Twelve, reading less like a self-contained book than like the oracle-against-a-foreign-nation sections found within the longer prophetic books.1

Structure

The book falls into three movements, unbroken by chapter divisions:

  • Judgment announced against Edom (vv. 1-9). The LORD has already stirred the nations against Edom; the pride of a people secure in mountain strongholds will not save them, for even careful thieves leave something behind, but Edom will be stripped bare.
  • The charge against Edom (vv. 10-14). The reason for judgment is stated directly: violence done to Jacob, Edom’s own brother, on the day of Jerusalem’s calamity, including looting, gloating, and handing over refugees.
  • The Day of the LORD and the kingdom restored (vv. 15-21). The judgment on Edom is set within a judgment on “all the nations” (Obad. 1:15), followed by deliverance on Mount Zion and the closing declaration that “the kingdom shall be the LORD’s” (Obad. 1:21).

Major Themes

Divine justice against pride and violence toward a brother nation. Edom’s guilt, as Obadiah states it, was compounded by kinship: Judah was “thy brother Jacob” (Obad. 1:10), and Edom’s violence against a brother nation, rather than merely a foreign one, is what the prophecy singles out for judgment. Barrows reads Edom’s conspicuous and long-standing hatred of “the covenant people” as the ground on which it stands, in this prophecy, for the guilt and coming punishment of Zion’s enemies generally.1 The judgment is also directed at pride specifically, at a people who trusted the security of their mountain strongholds (Obad. 1:3-4) rather than reckoning with the LORD’s justice.

The Day of the LORD extended to all nations. Obadiah’s central declaration, “the day of the LORD is near upon all the nations” (Obad. 1:15), generalizes a judgment against one nation into a pattern for every nation’s dealings with God’s people. Bavinck traces this same expansion across the prophetic corpus: the prophets “announce God’s judgments over several peoples: Philistia, Tyre, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Asshur, and Babel,” yet insist “the final effect of these judgments is not the destruction but the salvation of the gentiles,” since in Abraham’s seed all the nations of the earth are promised blessing (Gen. 12:3).2 Edom’s own judgment is thus one instance of a wider principle, not an isolated act of vengeance.

The kingdom’s restoration to the LORD. The book closes not with Edom’s fall but with deliverance and the LORD’s own reign: “upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness… and the kingdom shall be the LORD’s” (Obad. 1:17, 21). Watson cites this verse to show that true deliverance and holiness belong together, since “a Thousand Praises and Doxologies do not honour God, so much as the Mortifying [of] one Lust.”3 Bavinck likewise draws directly on Obadiah’s closing verses for this theme, citing Mount Zion as the place of promised refuge (Obad. 1:17, 21) and the LORD’s own kingship as its outcome, alongside the parallel promise in Joel that “the kingdom is the Lord’s and he is their stronghold” (Joel 3:16-17; Obad. 1:21).2

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 338: “The short prophecy of Obadiah is directed against Edom. The Edomites were conspicuous for their hatred of the covenant people… Accordingly they stand here, in respect to both their guilt and punishment, as the representatives of Zion’s enemies in all ages.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 24, “The Return of Christ”: “The prophets of God, therefore, announce God’s judgments over several peoples: Philistia, Tyre, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Asshur, and Babel. But the final effect of these judgments is not the destruction but the salvation of the gentiles.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity: Consisting of Above One Hundred and Seventy-Six Sermons on the Lesser Catechism (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 263. ↩