OBADIAH: AN ODYSSEY

Most people think the book of Obadiah
Is all about God's ire
Against Edom. They think this fire
Of judgement falls against that nation. In fact it's higher
Prophecy and calls us to account via
The Day of the Lord, beyond the mire
Of arid nationalism and narrow
Prejudice into a choir
Of restoration and redemption. Prior
Assumptions blind us to the higher
Call of love for kin: we're taken to the wire
Of extinction and God makes a pyre
Of human aspiration and empire: all are put to the sword
Finally, His Kingdom triumphs and all saints belong to the Lord.
 

INTRODUCTION: The Omitted Obadiah
 
When I was a boy at bible class in Caterham, England there was a competition to encourage us to learn the books of the Bible.
 
We used to recite them at break-neck speed, racing each other.
 
We developed patterns for drawing breath, and rhythms of recital: "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers (breath) Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth (breath)", and so on.
 
Unfortunately, Obadiah was the one I kept leaving out! So I never did win the prize of a free Bible!
 
And we still omit the book of Obadiah today.
 
I've never heard anyone quote a verse from this book and I have never heard a sermon preached on it.
 
I had never even heard any reference to it at all until I was deep in preparation for this commentary when I stumbled across an anecdote related by Dr Helen Roseveare, an English missionary to the Congo. She had been feeling low and sought guidance.
 
Helen was inspired by Obadiah 17 to press on with "utter dedication, a going forward to possess my possessions in Him, my Deliverer, my Sanctifier." 1
 
So, just like Nahum, this book is overlooked. It has a further similarity in that at first sight it seems to refer to God's people's relations with a single people-group/nation only, the Edomites, and is therefore seen by many as irrelevant to us today.
 
It is the shortest book of the Bible, with only twenty-one verses (which makes me feel eminently qualified to make these comments!), and although there are several Obadiahs mentioned in the Bible, there is no reason to believe the writer of this book had any connection with the man mentioned in 1 Kings 19, or elsewhere.
 
When I decided to study this book I asked God to show me what it was all about.
 
After much fruitless thinking and reading of commentaries, I finally received several answers.
 
Firstly, the book is about us.
 
We humans, with our deep needs and bitter divisions.
 
Mortals, with an ability to soar like eagles and sink into torture and savage inhumanity.
 
Secondly, it's about human destiny and in particular, group destiny.
 
Thirdly, it's about a glorious future; a golden age.
 
I also realised, and not for the first time, that no Bible book can be studied in isolation. Each refers to and draws on other passages. The torch light shone by one verse can throw a completely different light on another verse.
 
For that reason, I have quoted most of the other associated passages, and in this way a wider view emerges.
 
Obadiah is like a guitar riff, playing several chords. Some of these are like the basic chord shapes and structure of blues music, twelve bar, laying down themes which other Bible books expand.
 
The Obadiah tunes swell to musical masterpieces later, firstly in the Major Prophets, particularly in Isaiah and Jeremiah, then later in the New Testament teaching about the Kingdom of God. There we see fully fleshed out what is briefly touched on in Obadiah.
 
So in Obadiah we have teasing hints, brief references and subtle resonance with the fuller spectaculars to come.
 
Obadiah can be seen as a gig performed by a warm-up band, but whose musical themes will be gloriously expanded and fully explored by the career output of talented world-famous music makers; it's the difference between a competent local group and the stars of a band like U2 or REM, for example.
 
Yet as we shall see, it is good to hear the simple unplugged chords: it reminds us of the basics. And sometimes this stark music is easier to follow than the more complex notes of the big band sound!
 
To help the reader, I have collected and quoted various Bible passages, so it's all set out in these pages, and easy to follow.
 
The maps should also help and I suggest you scan them briefly to understand the geographical position of Israel, the people of Edom, and the surrounding nations. I've even tacked on a brief Chronology, just the sort of thing which puts many people off studying history, but needed here because we are looking at events over a very long time-span of several centuries. A modern equivalent would be a history of Anglo-French relations from the year 1285 AD to the present day. That would be a very long book, and chart many battles, between periods of uneasy peace. It would even include one of the longest wars in known history, the 100 Years War.
 
As we shall see, this unfortunately parallels the relationship between God's people and the people of Edom.
 
All Bible quotations are taken from the New International Version (Anglicised) unless otherwise stated.
 
So let's read the passages first, and I then set out five different approaches to this neat yet punchy Bible book.
 
APPROACHES TO OBADIAH
 
First approach: A pizza
 
We can approach this book as food, one of my favourite topics, though I prefer the eating to the cooking. Obadiah can be seen as a pizza, and a deep-pan pizza at that. I hope you enjoy the meal!
 
The deep base is verses 1-14.
 

Deep base
(Obadiah 1-14)
 
"1 The vision of Obadiah.
 
This is what the Sovereign LORD says about Edom-
 
We have heard a message from the LORD: An envoy was sent to the nations to say, Rise, and let us go against her for battle- 2 See, I will make you small among the nations; you will be utterly despised.
 
3 The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, 'Who can bring me down to the ground?'
 
4 Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down, declares the LORD.
 
5 If thieves came to you, if robbers in the night- Oh, what a disaster awaits you- would they not steal only as much as they wanted? If grape pickers came to you, would they not leave a few grapes?
 
6 But how Esau will be ransacked, his hidden treasures pillaged!
 
7 All your allies will force you to the border; your friends will deceive and overpower you; those who eat your bread will set a trap for you, but you will not detect it.
 
8 In that day, declares the LORD, will I not destroy the wise men of Edom, men of understanding in the mountains of Esau?
 
9 Your warriors, O Teman, will be terrified, and everyone in Esau's mountains will be cut down in the slaughter.
 
10 Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame; you will be destroyed for ever.
 
11 On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them.
 
12 You should not look down on your brother in the day of his misfortune, nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction, nor boast so much in the day of their trouble.
 
13 You should not march through the gates of my people in the day of their disaster, nor look down on them in their calamity in the day of their disaster, nor seize their wealth in the day of their disaster.
 
14 You should not wait at the crossroads to cut down their fugitives, nor hand over their survivors in the day of their trouble."

Verses 1-14 are the deep base, or crust of the pizza. This passage is a prophecy about Edom, delivered in what we moderns would call 'real-time.' It talks of what will actually happen, soon, and yet its language speaks as if the future has already happened.
 
This is what Jacques Ellul terms the 'prophetic past' tense and like the book of Nahum, it is a prediction and pronouncement of an awful judgement.
 
The 'prophetic past' tense was used in the Hebrew language when recording predictions. It's almost as if the future, once revealed by God, is so certain that it has already happened. It's also a device forced upon the Hebrew speakers because of the structure of the Hebrew language at that time. 2
 
Who or what was Edom, you may ask?
 
"According to the Bible, the descendants of Esau who settled in the mountainous area south of the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba; in Greek, Idumeans. They often appear as enemies of Israel, having been conquered by David, but retaking parts of Judah and becoming a Kingdom in the 8cBC. They participated in the overthrow of Judah in 587BC by the Babylonians, but were eventually conquered by John Hyrcanus in the late 2cBC, forcing their integration into the Jewish people. Herod I (the Great) was of Edomite descent". 3
 
Esau was Jacob's brother. Jacob was a cunning sly man, whose name was changed to 'Prince', and who became the father and patriarch of God's people.
 
Esau's descendants became kings, and were hostile to Israel.4
 
They lived side by side, but almost always in enmity, rarely in amity.
 
Yet God's people were forbidden to abuse them. "Do not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother".5
 
Oh dear! I have two elder brothers and our relationships have been stormy on occasion!
 
We shall look deeper into sibling rivalry, later.
 
The Jeremiah passage I have quoted above repeats and expands on Obadiah. It doesn't matter whether the prophecies of Jeremiah were earlier or later than Obadiah. What is interesting is how both shed more light on the other. Furthermore, repetition is not wasteful. It simply underlines the importance of the message.
 
It also shows that the great prophets were in agreement with each other. There was a prophetic trend running throughout the histories of the Old Testament times, because some of these prophecies are many years apart. In fact it's a useful way of judging prophecy; real prophets tend to agree with each other in broad terms, even if they have a slightly different 'take' on the view!
 
It's rather like the different camera angles a film director shows us of the same action; it all depends upon the position of the bystander as to precisely what is seen, but nevertheless you get a broad understanding of what has happened even from one camera only.
 
So with the prophets: they were all agreed that Edom would come to a sticky end, and that there would be no place left to hide.
 
Teman was Esau's grandson, and his name is sometimes used in The Bible to denote the people in the land of Edom.6
 
Bozrah was an important Edomite city.
 
It all went horribly wrong for the Edomites some 300 years after Jeremiah's prophecy, when in 3cBC their country was overrun by the Nabataeans. These conquerors built Petra, a must-see city for modern tourists, carved out of rock.
 
The Edomite survivors fled to Judea, where they were subdued by Judas Maccabeus7, the great Hebrew warrior, and later incorporated into the Jewish people.
 
I suspect (but cannot prove) that the eagle was an Edomite symbol: it is certainly used often enough in The Bible as a symbol of a particular people and their strength, and of individual kings.
 
I have seen eagles, tiny in African skies, circling on the thermals. They are impressive.
 
Any hillman would see eagles and respect them for their fierce independence, their freedom of the air, their farsight and piercing gaze.
 
They are apt symbols of aggressive warlike kings, living in the heights, swooping with sudden lethal fury down onto unsuspecting prey.
 
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1 Roseveare H, (1966) Give me this Mountain, Christian Focus, p46
 
2 "In Hebrew thinking, an action is regarded as being either completed or incompleted. Hebrew, therefore, knows of no past, present or future tenses, but has instead a perfect and an imperfect.""Weingreen, J (1959) Hebrew Grammar, Oxford, p56
 
3 Lenman, B. & Boyd, K. (1994) Chambers Dictionary of World History, p290
 
4 Numbers 20:14 -21. Judges 11:17f
 
5 Deuteronomy 23:7. "You shall not detest an Edomite, for he is your brother…" (New American Standard Bible).
 
6 Habakkuk 3:3
 
7 1 Maccabees 5:65