The Book of Obadiah

Obadiah is the shortest book of the whole Old Testament: a single chapter, twenty-one verses. It bears entirely on one subject, the judgment of Edom. Edom is the people descended from Esau, the twin brother of Jacob; the two nations born of these two brothers, Israel and Edom, are therefore brother peoples. The book draws its force from this bond of blood betrayed: Edom stood aside, then took part in the pillage, on the day Jerusalem fell. To this brother who denied the brotherhood, Obadiah announces the judgment of God, then the final reversal in which Zion will be raised up and the kingship will belong to God alone.

The prophet and his oracle

Of the prophet himself almost nothing is known: the book opens on his name alone, with no date or genealogy. “Vision of Obadiah.” Obadiah 1:1. The name means “servant of the Lord,” and that is all that presents him: the man effaces himself entirely behind the word he transmits. The oracle is aimed at Edom from the first verse, and it announces that a coalition rises against him: “Thus said the Lord to Edom: we have received a message from the Lord, and a herald has been sent among the nations: Up! Let us rise against him for battle!” Obadiah 1:1. God himself gathers the nations against Edom, and the next verse gives the sentence: “Behold, I have made you small among the nations, you are the object of the greatest contempt.” Obadiah 1:2. The people that thought itself great will be brought low and despised; the whole book will unfold the why of this reversal.

The pride of Edom

The first fault of Edom is its pride, and the prophet ties it to its very geography. The land of Edom was a region of heights and rocky gorges, where the inhabitants thought themselves beyond reach. “The pride of your heart has led you astray, you who dwell in the clefts of the rocks, whose dwelling is the heights; he says in his heart: Who will bring me down to earth?” Obadiah 1:3. Perched in its mountains, Edom thought itself above all danger, and this assurance had become contempt of God. But no height puts one out of God’s reach: “Though you rose as high as the eagle, though you set your nest among the stars, I would bring you down from there, oracle of the Lord.” Obadiah 1:4. The eagle’s nest at the height of the rocks, and even a nest set among the stars, do not escape the hand of God who brings down. The pride that thinks itself beyond reach is precisely what God brings low, and the plunder of Edom will be total, more complete than a thief’s: “If thieves had entered your house, would they not have carried off only what was enough for them? How Esau has been ransacked, how his hidden treasures have been searched out!” Obadiah 1:5-6. The ordinary thief leaves something; the plunder of Edom will leave nothing, down to the hidden treasures. And those who betray him will be his own allies: “They have driven you to the frontier, all your allies; those who ate your bread have set a trap beneath your feet.” Obadiah 1:7. Edom had betrayed his brother; he will be betrayed in his turn by his friends, by the very ones who shared his table.

The fault against the brother

At the heart of the book lies the fault that calls down the whole judgment: what Edom did to his brother Jacob on the day of misfortune. “Because of the slaughter, because of the violence against your brother Jacob, shame will cover you, and you will be cut off forever.” Obadiah 1:10. The word “brother” carries here the whole gravity of the fault: Edom did not merely attack a neighbouring people, he struck his own blood. The prophet then describes the scene of the day Jerusalem fell, and the place Edom held in it: “On the day you stood facing him, on the day enemies led off his army, and strangers cast lots over Jerusalem, you too were like one of them!” Obadiah 1:11. Edom stood there, a spectator at first, then an accomplice: to side with the plunderers against one’s brother is to become one of them. The prophet then lists, in a series of urgent prohibitions, all that Edom should not have done: to rejoice over the misfortune of Judah, to enter the city to plunder, to post himself at the crossroads to slaughter the fugitives. “Do not feast your eyes on the day of your brother, on the day of his misfortune; do not rejoice over the children of Judah, on the day of their ruin.” Obadiah 1:12. “Do not stand at the crossroads, to cut down his fugitives; do not hand over his survivors, on the day of distress.” Obadiah 1:14. Each prohibition describes in hollow what Edom did: he rejoiced, he plundered, he handed over those who fled. The fault is not only the violence, but the evil joy taken in the misfortune of a brother, and the relentlessness against the one already brought down.

The Day of the Lord

From here the oracle widens: the fault of Edom becomes the exemplary case of a judgment aimed at all the nations. The prophet names this judgment the Day of the Lord. “For the day of the Lord is near, for all the nations; as you have done, so it will be done to you; your work will fall back on your head.” Obadiah 1:15. The law of the judgment is stated in a clear formula: the evil committed returns upon the one who committed it. Edom stripped his brother, he will be stripped; he rejoiced at the fall, he will fall. And the image that expresses this reversal is that of the cup: Edom and the nations have drunk, that is, they grew drunk with violence on the holy mountain; in their turn they will drink the cup of judgment. “Just as you drank on my holy mountain, so all the nations will drink continually; they will drink, they will swallow, and they will be as though they had never been.” Obadiah 1:16. To drink the cup is, in the Bible, to receive the punishment in full, leaving nothing of it; the nations that did violence will vanish as though they had never existed.

The restoration of Jacob

The book, which until then had been only judgment, turns in its last verses into promise. Facing Edom as it collapses, Zion will be raised up and made holy: “But on Mount Zion there will be survivors; it will be a holy place, and the house of Jacob will return into its possessions.” Obadiah 1:17. The contrast is complete: Edom cut off forever, and Jacob recovering his inheritance. The prophet then draws out the image of fire: the house of Jacob will be the flame, and Edom the dry stubble it consumes. “The house of Jacob will be a fire, the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau will be reduced to stubble; there will be no survivor for the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken.” Obadiah 1:18. The people long the victim becomes the fire that prevails over its oppressor, not by its own strength, but because God has spoken. The following verses announce that the people will spread on every side and take back the lost territories, from the Negev in the south to the regions of the north, and that even the most distant exiles will return: those of Sepharad, a far-off land of exile, will recover their towns. “The captives of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad will possess the towns of the Negev.” Obadiah 1:20. The restoration forgets none of the scattered, even the farthest.

The kingship belongs to God

The book ends on a summit that far surpasses the dispute between two peoples. The last verse announces that deliverers, men raised up by God, will go up onto Mount Zion to judge Edom, that is, to carry out against him the sentence the whole book has pronounced; and the last word belongs to the kingship of God: “Deliverers will go up onto Mount Zion, to judge the mountain of Esau; and to the Lord will belong the dominion.” Obadiah 1:21. The whole book was leading here. The fall of Edom and the raising up of Jacob are not the end; they open onto the reign of God over all the earth. The judgment of a proud people, which might have seemed a local affair, proves to be a sign of the universal judgment by which God restores justice and makes it known that to him alone belongs the kingship. Obadiah, the briefest of the prophets, thus ends on the vastest of promises: the Lord is king.