Bible Commentaries

1–16. The Destruction of Edom. 1–9. The Punishment of Edom foretold

1. The vision of Obadiah.] This is the short Title of this short Book. It tells us the name of the Author, which is all that we know of him, and the nature of his work.

The vision] This word, like its cognate verb, when it is used with reference to prophetic revelation (e.g. Habakkuk 1:1; Isaiah 1:1; Isaiah 2:1; Nahum 1:1, comp. “seer,” 1 Chronicles 21:9 and the explanation given in 1 Samuel 9:9, where however the Heb. word for “seer” is not the same) properly signifies that which appears as it were before the eyes of the prophet, the picture which is represented to his mind in prophetic ecstasy. In that strict sense, part at least of what here follows was the vision of Obadiah. He sees the Edomites in the rocky fastnesses of Petra, like the eagles on their crags (Obadiah 1:3-4). He beholds them taking part against the Israelites in the day of their calamity, and as a spectator of their actions cries out to them repeatedly, “Do it not” (Obadiah 1:11-14). But the word comes to be used in a wider sense, and is often, as here, the title of a whole Book, in which, together with visions proper, historical and other matter is contained (comp. Isaiah 1:1 with 2 Chronicles 32:32).

Obadiah] i.e. servant, or worshipper of Jehovah.

Thus saith the Lord God concerning Edom] This is not a second title of the Book. It does not stand as an independent sentence, but is closely connected with what follows. The word “her” at the end of the verse and the direct addresses without mention of name, Obadiah 1:2-5, refer to and require the word “Edom” in this clause. It is rather the opening announcement of the prophet, that all that he is about to utter is not his own word, but Jehovah’s. The remainder of the verse follows logically, rather than formally, upon this announcement. In Obadiah 1:2, Jehovah is introduced as the speaker.

We have heard] This has been taken to mean, “I, and other prophets of my own or earlier times,” or “I, and my countrymen,” implying, in this latter case, “that the tidings were of the greatest interest to Israel, and would afford it consolation.” (Delitzsch.) But the absence of the personal pronoun in the Hebrew, and the use of the singular number, “I have heard,” by Jeremiah in the parallel passage (Jeremiah 49:14) seem rather to shew that “We” has here no special emphasis. To the prophet as a Jew the world was divided into two parts, his own countrymen and the heathen. “A rumour,” he says, “has reached us: a herald is sent to them.”

rumour] lit. hearing. The same Hebrew word is rendered “report” Isaiah 53:1, and elsewhere. (Comp. ἀκοαί πολέμων, Matthew 24:6.) It means here tidings (R.V.), or message. There is no idea of uncertainty as in the English word rumour.

ambassador] or a messenger (comp. Proverbs 13:17; Proverbs 25:13). The meaning of the word seems to be, to go on circuit; or as we should say to go round, from nation to nation. Jeremiah describes Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, as fighting against Jerusalem and against all the cities thereof with “all his army and all the kingdoms of the earth of his dominion, and all the people” (Jeremiah 34:1). His army would doubtless be of the same composite character when he subsequently turned his hand against Edom.

Arise ye, and let us rise up] This may either be taken as being throughout the address of the messenger or herald to the nations whom he visits, inciting them to arise, and associating himself with them in the invitation which he gives; or it may be the call of the herald and the response of the nations, heard as it were and recorded by the prophet—“Arise,” says he; “Let us arise,” say they. Or yet again, the words may be throughout those of the heathen exhorting one another to obey the summons of the herald, whose address to them is not recorded but left to be gathered by the reader from the effect which it produces. This last is most forcible and most in accordance with the graphic style of Obadiah. He hears the call to arms passing to and fro, brief and eager, “Arise ye,” “Let us arise,” as Jehovah’s herald pursues his onward course. The parallel passage in Jeremiah, however, if it is to be regarded as a version of them in prose, favours the first of these interpretations of the words.

2. I have made thee … thou art] Jehovah is now the speaker. “I have made thee small” in my purpose, which though its accomplishment is still future is as certain as though it were already executed. “Thou art,” already in inevitable destiny, “greatly despised.” There is nothing to commend the view of Calvin and others that Obadiah 1:2 is introduced to aggravate the pride of Edom: “Whereas I made thee small and despised, by the narrow territory which I assigned to thee, and the low place I gave thee among the nations of the earth, the pride of thine heart hath deceived thee,” &c. As a fact the Edomites had at this time acquired very considerable territory, and were a strong and formidable nation. If that had not been so, what need would there have been to summon “the nations” to chastise them?

3. the clefts of the rock] The word rock may here be a proper name, Selah or Petra; the reference would then be to the rock-hewn dwellings of that remarkable city. Perhaps, however, the reference is more general to the “clefts of the rock” which abounded and were used as habitations throughout Edom proper. The expression which occurs here and in Jeremiah 49:16, is only found beside in Song of Solomon 2:14, where it is used of the hiding-place of a dove.

Ewald renders this verse: “Thy heart’s haughtiness deceived thee, who inhabiteth in rock-clefts, his proud dwelling, who saith in his heart, who shall cast me down to the earth?”

“The great strength of a position such as Selah’s was shewn during the war of the Independence of Greece, in the case of the monastery of Megaspelion, which was situated, like Selah, on the face of a precipice. Ibrahim Pasha was unable to bring its defenders down by assault from below, or above, and though ungarrisoned it baffled his utmost efforts.” Speaker’s Commentary.

For a description of Petra and the approach to it, see note A, below.

NOTE A

The following graphic description of Petra from the pen of the late Dean Stanley, is taken by permission of the publishers from his well-known work, Sinai and Palestine:—

“You descend from those wide downs and those white cliffs which I have before described as forming the background of the Red City when seen from the west, and before you opens a deep cleft between rocks of red sandstone rising perpendicularly to the height of one, two, or three hundred feet. This is the Sîk, or ‘cleft;’ through this flows—if one may use the expression—the dry torrent, which, rising in the mountains half-an-hour hence, gives the name by which alone Petra is now known amongst the Arabs—Wâdy Mûsa. ‘For,’—so Sheykh Mohammed tells us—‘as surely as Jebel Hârûn (the Mountain of Aaron) is so called from the burial-place of Aaron, is Wâdy Mûsa (the Valley of Moses) so called from the cleft being made by the rod of Moses when he brought the stream through into the valley beyond.’ It is, indeed, a place worthy of the scene, and one could long to believe it. Follow me, then, down this magnificent gorge—the most magnificent, beyond all doubt, which I have ever beheld. The rocks are almost precipitous, or rather, they would be, if they did not, like their brethren in all this region, overlap, and crumble, and crack, as if they would crash over you. The gorge is about a mile and a half long, and the opening of the cliffs at the top is throughout almost as narrow as the narrowest part of the defile of Pfeffers, which, in dimensions and form, it more resembles than any other of my acquaintance. At its very first entrance you pass under the arch which, though greatly broken, still spans the chasm—meant apparently to indicate the approach to the city. You pass under this along the bed of the torrent, now rough with stones, but once a regular paved road like the Appian Way, the pavement still remaining at intervals in the bed of the stream—the stream, meanwhile, which now has its own wild way, being then diverted from its course along troughs hewn in the rock above, or conducted through earthenware pipes, still traceable. These, and a few niches for statues now gone, are the only traces of human hand. What a sight it must have been, when all these were perfect! A road, level and smooth, running through these tremendous rocks, and the blue sky just visible above, the green caper-plant and wild ivy hanging in festoons over the heads of the travellers as they wind along, the flowering oleander fringing then, as now, this marvellous highway like the border of a garden walk. You move on; and the ravine, and with it the road,—and with the road in old times the caravans of India,—winds as if it were the most flexible of rivers, instead of being in truth a rent through a mountain wall. In this respect, in its sinuosity, it differs from any other like gorge I ever saw. The peculiarity is, perhaps, occasioned by the singularly friable character of the cliffs, the same character that has caused the thousand excavations beyond; and the effect is, that instead of the uniform character of most ravines, you are constantly turning round corners, and catching new lights and new aspects, in which to view the cliffs themselves. They are, for the most part, deeply red, and when you see their tops emerging from the shade and glowing in the sunshine I could almost forgive the exaggeration that calls them scarlet. But in fact they are of the darker hues which in the shadow amount almost to black, and such is their colour at the point to which I have brought you, after a mile or more through the defile—the cliffs overarching in their narrowest contraction—when, suddenly through the narrow opening left between the two dark walls of another turn of the gorge, you see a pale pink front of pillars and sculptured figures closing your view from top to bottom. You rush towards it, you find yourself at the end of the defile, and in the presence of an excavated temple, which remains almost entirely perfect between the two flanks of dark rock out of which it is hewn; its preservation and its peculiarly light and rosy tint being alike due to its singular position facing the ravine or rather wall of rock, through which the ravine issues, and thus sheltered beyond any other building (if one may so call it) from the wear-and-tear of weather, which has effaced, though not defaced, the features, and tanned the complexion of all the other temples.

This I only saw by degrees, coming upon it from the west; but to the travellers of old times, and to those who, like Burckhardt in modern times, came down the defile, not knowing what they were to see, and meeting with this as the first image of the Red City, I cannot conceive anything more striking. There is nothing of peculiar grace or grandeur in the temple itself—(the Khazné, or Treasury, it is called)—it is of the most debased style of Roman architecture; but under the circumstances, I almost think one is more startled by finding in these wild and impracticable mountains a production of the last effort of a decaying and over-refined civilisation. than if it were something which, by its better and simpler taste, mounted more nearly to the source where Art and Nature were one.

Probably anyone who entered Petra this way, would be so electrified by this apparition (which I cannot doubt to have been evoked there purposely, as you would place a fountain or an obelisk at the end of an avenue), as to have no eyes to behold or sense to appreciate anything else. Still, I must take you to the end. The Sîk, though it opens here, yet contracts once more, and it is in this last stage that those red and purple variegations, which I have before described, appear in their most gorgeous hues; and here also begins, what must have been properly the Street of Tombs, the Appian Way of Petra. Here they are most numerous, the rock is honeycombed with cavities of all shapes and sizes, and through these you advance till the defile once more opens, and you see—strange and unexpected sight!—with tombs above, below, and in front, a Greek Theatre hewn out of the rock, its tiers of seats literally red and purple alternately, in the native rock. Once more the defile closes with its excavations, and once more opens in the area of Petra itself; the torrent-bed passing now through absolute desolation and silence, though strewn with the fragments which shew that you once entered on a splendid and busy city gathered along in the rocky banks, as along the quays of some great northern river.”

4. thou exalt thyself] There is no need to supply the word “thyself,” as is done by A.V. and others (“though thou wentest as high as the eagle.” Ewald). “Thy nest” is the subject of both clauses. The words as they stand give a perfectly clear sense in English, as in Hebrew: though thou exaltest as the eagle, and though among the stars thou settest thy nest. Comp. Numbers 24:21, Habakkuk 2:9.

5, 6. The completeness of the destruction and desolation of Edom is depicted by a double contrast. Two cases are supposed in which something would be left behind. The thief or the robber would take his fill and depart: the grape-gatherer would not strip every cluster from the vine. But the enemies of Edom would do worse than either of these. They would spare nothing, nor stay their hand till they had left her utterly desolate and bare.

how art thou cut off] These words are an exclamation of the prophet, forced from him by the utter devastation which in prophetic vision he sees before his eyes. This is no work of the common robber, of the ordinary spoiler!

6. the things of Esau] lit. how are they searched out, Esau; i. e. everything, people and property alike, that belongs to Esau.

his hidden things] rather places; his treasure-houses and receptacles hewn in the secret places of the rocks, and inaccessible as he thought them. Comp. Jeremiah 49:10. Hidden treasures, R.V.

7. The general drift of this verse is plain. It introduces another particular in which the pride of Edom had deceived her. Her trust in the wisdom of her policy, in the sagacious alliances which she had formed, should fail her no less signally than her confidence in the natural security of her position. But the details of the verse, as regards both the alliances referred to and the meaning of some of the expressions used, are not without difficulty.

the men of thy confederacy] As regards the first of these points, the majority of commentators understand by “the men of thy confederacy,” “the men that were at peace with thee,” neighbouring nations, “probably Moab and Ammon, Tyre and Zidon” (Pusey); or, “Arabian tribes” (Speaker’s Comm.). But there is reason to believe that the Edomites shared a common fate with the Moabites and Ammonites at the hands of the Chaldean invader, when after the destruction of Jerusalem he was pushing his way towards Egypt. (See Introd. § 3, comp. Ezekiel 25.) It is of course possible that the Edomites were the first to suffer, and that when Nebuchadnezzar came upon them they were deserted and betrayed by their neighbours and allies in the manner described in this verse. But it is at least worthy of consideration (it is a view which Calvin appears to assume as a matter of course) whether the Chaldeans themselves are not intended by “the men of thy confederacy,” “the men that were at peace with thee,” of whom the prophet speaks. Well might Edom plume himself upon the “understanding” which led him, on the approach of Nebuchadnezzar towards Judea, to make alliance with him, and thus to seize an opportunity of at once venting his ancient spite upon Israel, and securing himself against the attack of the invader. But the wisdom of this astute policy should prove in the issue to be foolishness. It should justify and call forth on the part of the beholder the exclamation, “There is no understanding in him!” The Chaldean should use Edom for his purpose, and then take and destroy him in his own craftiness.

have brought thee even to the border] This has been taken to mean that the neighbouring nations, thy allies, to whom thou sentest for help in thy time of need, have conducted back to the border or frontier thy ambassadors with all the usual marks of respect, but have courteously declined to render thee assistance. The words, however, may mean, have “driven thee out,” R.V. margin (as in Genesis 3:23, 1 Kings 9:7, Isaiah 50:1, where the same verb is used), and may refer to the Chaldeans. This meaning is given to them by some commentators who understand the reference to be to neighbouring tribes, who are thus described, they think, as not merely refusing aid to Edom, but taking active part with the Chaldeans against him.

prevailed against thee] This may mean prevailed against thee in counsel, outwitted thee, but it is simpler to take it of actual violence and physical compulsion.

they that eat thy bread have laid a wound under thee] The words, “they that eat” are not in the Hebrew. Many commentators connect them with the preceding clause, an arrangement which the order of the words in the original facilitates: they have prevailed against thee, the men of thy peace, of thy bread, i.e. the men who were, at peace with thee and who ate thy bread. But it is better to take the clause, “thy bread they make a wound (or a net) under thee,” separately, and to understand it to mean that thy allies and confederates make thy bread which they eat (and the sacred obligation according to Eastern ideas of eating bread together must not here be lost sight of), or thy table at which they sit, an occasion to deal thee a secret and deadly wound, or to catch thee as it were in the snare of their insidious plots against thee. If the rendering “snare” be adopted, and it seems on the whole preferable, the passage receives elucidation from the words of the Psalmist (Psalm 69:22):

“Let their table before them become a snare,

And when they are in peace (let it be) a trap;”

of which “perhaps the meaning may be: let them be like persons who while sitting at their meals ‘in peace,’ in security, unarmed, and unsuspecting, are suddenly surprised by their enemies. Their ‘table becomes a snare,’ as exposing them to certain destruction.” Dean Perowne, on the Psalms. The whole verse may then be paraphrased: “Thy confederates, the Chaldeans with whom thou didst enter into treaty, have driven thee to the border of thy country on every side, and expelled thee totally from it. Those that were at peace with thee have treated thee with mingled treachery and violence. The Chaldeans whom thou regardedst as friends have deceived thee, and prevailed against thee. Thy bread which they ate, they have used as a snare to entrap thee, taking advantage of the friendly relations which existed to work thy unlooked-for ruin. There is no understanding in him! To think that the vaunted penetration of Edom should have betrayed him into so humiliating and complete an overthrow!”

8. destroy the wise men] i.e. so deprive them of their wisdom that they shall cease to be wise men. Comp. Jeremiah 49:7, “Concerning Edom, thus saith the Lord of hosts; Is wisdom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom vanished?” There is perhaps a reference to wisdom as a special characteristic of the Edomites. “Eliphaz, the chief of Job’s friends, the representative of human wisdom, was a Temanite.” (Pusey, see Job 2:11.) In the Book of Baruch the Edomites are referred to as types of wisdom. “It hath not been heard of in Chanaan, neither hath it been seen in Theman. The Agarenes that seek wisdom upon earth, the merchants of Meran and of Theman, the authors of fables, and searchers out of understanding; none of these have known the way of wisdom, or remember her paths.” Bar 3:22-23.

8, 9. Though thus shamefully betrayed and utterly spoiled, the Edomites might yet possibly have recovered themselves, if those inherent qualities in which the strength of nations as of individuals consists, had still been left to them. But the judgment of God would deprive them of these, and so render their case hopeless. Wisdom and courage, the two great resources of a nation in adversity, would alike fail them. Comp. Jeremiah 49:7; Jeremiah 49:22.