The Book of Obadiah is a Jewish and Christian religious text, found in the Old Testament of the Bible. The text is the shortest book in the Old Testament, consisting of only twenty-one verses. Obadiah is considered to be one of the twelve minor prophets and this text is a prophetic vision concerning the divine judgment of Edom.
I generally try to do Bible studies with free resources online. I like to make my work as accessible and as cross-reference friendly as possible. That said, if you are interested in a study of Obadiah, already completed by an actual scholar, I will direct you to the following:
Obadiah (/oʊbəˈdaɪ.ə/; Hebrew: עֹבַדְיָה – ʿŌḇaḏyā or עֹבַדְיָהוּ – ʿŌḇaḏyāhū; “servant of Yah”, or “Slave of Yah [YHWH]”), also known as Abdias, is a biblicalprophet. The authorship of the Book of Obadiah is traditionally attributed to the prophet Obadiah.
Dating
The date of composition is disputed and is difficult to determine due to the lack of information regarding the prophet Obadiah. However, because Obadiah wrote about Edom, there are two generally accepted dates. The first is 853–841 BC, when Jerusalem was invaded by Philistines and Arabs during the reign of Jehoram of Judah (recorded in 2 Kings8:20–22 and 2 Chronicles21:8–20). This earlier period would place Obadiah as a contemporary of the prophet Elijah. Jewish traditions favor the earlier date because the Jewish Talmud identifies Obadiah as an Edomite himself, and a descendant of Eliphaz the Temanite, a friend of Job.
The political situation implied in the prophecy points to a time after the Exile, probably in the mid-fifth century B.C. No value can be attributed to traditions identifying this prophet with King Ahab’s steward (… so Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 39b) or with King Ahaziah’s captain (… so Pseudo-Epiphanius…).— The Interpreters’ Bible
Rabbinic tradition
Vision of Obadiah
According to the Talmud, Obadiah is said to have been a convert to Judaism from Edom, a descendant of Eliphaz, the friend of Job. He is identified with the Obadiah who was the servant of Ahab, and was chosen to prophesy against Edom because he was himself an Edomite.
Obadiah is supposed to have received the gift of prophecy for having hidden the “hundred prophets” from the persecution of Jezebel. He hid the prophets in two caves, so that if those in one cave should be discovered those in the other might yet escape.
Obadiah was very rich, but all his wealth was expended in feeding the poor prophets, until, in order to be able to continue to support them, finally he had to borrow money at interest from Ahab’s son Jehoram. Obadiah’s fear of God was one degree higher than that of Abraham; and if the house of Ahab had been capable of being blessed, it would have been blessed for Obadiah’s sake.
Christian tradition
In some Christian traditions he is said to have been born in “Sychem” (Shechem), and to have been the third captain sent out by Ahaziah against Elijah. The date of his ministry is unclear due to certain historical ambiguities in the book bearing his name, but is believed to be around 586 B.C.
Russian icon of Prophets Amos and Obadiah, 18th century.
According to an old tradition, Obadiah is buried in Sebastia, at the same site as Elisha and where later the body of John the Baptist was believed to have been buried by his followers.
As this book concerns the judgment of the Edomites… who were they?
Edomites are related in several ancient sources including the list of the EgyptianpharaohSeti I from c. 1215 BC as well as in the chronicle of a campaign by Ramesses III (r. 1186–1155 BC), and the Tanakh. Archaeological investigation has shown that the nation flourished between the 13th and the 8th centuries BC and was destroyed after a period of decline in the 6th century BC by the Babylonians. After the fall of the kingdom of Edom, the Edomites were pushed westward towards southern Judah by nomadic tribes coming from the east; among them were the ArabNabataeans, who first appeared in the historical annals of the 4th century BC and had already established their own kingdom in what used to be Edom by the first half of the 2nd century BC. More recent excavations show that the process of Edomite settlement in the southern parts of the Kingdom of Judah and parts of the Negev down to Timna had started already before the destruction of the kingdom by Nebuchadnezzar II in 587/86 BC, both by peaceful penetration and by military means and taking advantage of the already-weakened state of Judah.
Once pushed out of their territory, the Edomites settled during the Persian period in an area comprising the southern hills of Judea down to the area north of Be’er Sheva. The people appear under a Greek form of their old name, as Idumeans or Idumaeans, and their new territory was called Idumea or Idumaea (Greek: Ἰδουμαία, Idoumaía; Latin: Idūmaea), a term that was used in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, also mentioned in the New Testament. During the 2nd century BC, the Edomites were forcibly converted to Judaism by the Hasmoneans, and were incorporated into the Jewish religion.
Edom and Idumea are two related but distinct terms; they relate to a historically-contiguous population but to two separate, if adjacent, territories which the Edomites/Idumeans occupied in different periods of their history. The Edomites first established a kingdom (“Edom”) in the southern area of modern-day Jordan and later migrated into the southern parts of the Kingdom of Judah (“Idumea”, modern-day Mount Hebron) when Judah was first weakened and then destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC.
Who are Edomites identified with today?
There are several interesting answers to this question. We’ll look at a few of them. From thetorah.com: (excerpt below)
In the Bible, Esau is the ancestor of the Edomites who live on Mount Seir, southwest of Judah. So how did the rabbis come to associate Esau and Edom with Rome? Two main factors are at work here: Christianity and Herod.
Gen 25:22 The children struggled in her womb… 25:23 and YHWH said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, two separate peoples shall issue from your body; one people shall be mightier than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.”
This battle in the womb continues through their birth:
25:24 When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. 25:25 The first one emerged red, like a hairy mantle all over, and they named him Esau. 25:26 Then his brother emerged, holding on to the heel of Esau, and they named him Jacob…
As Jacob and Esau grow up, their competition continues. Esau is a hunter while Jacob is a tent-dweller, and one day, when Esau returns from a hunt, Jacob convinces his exhausted brother to sell him his birthright for a pot of stew. In a later story, Jacob finally overtakes his older twin, when he tricks their elderly, blind father Isaac into blessing him with Esau’s blessing (27:29).
This leaves Esau with the “blessing” of subservience to his younger brother (27:40). Esau is furious at his brother’s trick, and Jacob runs away to Haran to escape Esau’s wrath. When Jacob returns twenty years later, the brothers reconcile (Gen 33). Even so, in the end, the brothers go their separate ways, with Jacob staying in Canaan and Esau moving to Seir, in the southern Transjordan:
Gen 36:6 Esau took his wives, his sons and daughters, and all the members of his household, his cattle and all his livestock, and all the property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan and went to another land because of his brother Jacob…. 36:8So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir—Esau being Edom.
Although the texts about Jacob and Esau are ostensibly speaking about individuals, each brother represents an ethnic and/or political group that resided in the Levant in biblical times. The physical description of Esau, as red (adom) and covered in hair (se’ar) foreshadows his future as the founder of the Edomites who live near Mount Seir.
[…]
Edom and Rome
This basic sketch of the relationship between the polities of Israel/Judah/Judea and Edom/Idumea during the biblical and Second Temple periods indicates that Edom was a polity that ruled from the Mount Seir area, from Wadi al-Hasa (south-east of the Dead Sea) in modern day Jordan and southward, eventually extending westward to Ashkelon on the Mediterranean Coast, and northward up to Hebron, in the Second Temple period.
And yet, Rabbinic midrash associates Esau and Edom with a completely different geographical area—the city of Rome in the Italian Peninsula—and speaks as if Romans are all Edomites. How did this develop? I believe that the two main factors were at work here: Christianity and Herod.
To understand the development of this rabbinic interpretation of Esau and Edom, we need to look at a parallel process of allegorizing Esau which begins with the Jewish, Christ-believing homileticist, Paul of Tarsus (ca. 5–64/67 C.E.).
Another idea – not far from the one above – is that the Edomites represent (metaphorically) all the nations who hate Israel. From enduringword.com (excerpt below)
So, what happened happed to the Edomites? As a genetic people, the descendants of Esau are lost to history. Of course, their DNA lives on in some sense, but they are so intermixed with other peoples that there is no definable genetic group of “Edomites” today.
When Isaiah or other prophets mention Edom in connection with future judgment (as in Isaiah 34 or 63), they are mentioned because they represent the nations that hate Israel and hate Israel’s God. Because the Edomites were famous as being those who were close to Israel but who hated them and rejoiced in Israel’s calamity, they became representatives of those who hate the people of God.
I have also embedded a more thorough video discussing the topic below:
Why does an identification of present-day Edom matter?
For those who view certain Biblical passages regarding the fate of Edom as unfulfilled, then one must discern who Edom is to see for whom (in the present) these judgments might apply. Some Christian interpretations of End Times texts imply that Edom will be a nation at the time of Christ’s second coming (I would add that these interpretations are not universally agreed upon.) In addition to Obadiah, which we will be studying, Isaiah also includes a passage assigning judgment to Edom.
Isaiah 63:
Who is this who comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah, he who is splendid in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength? “It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save.”
2 Why is your apparel red, and your garments like his who treads in the winepress?
3 “I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their lifeblood spattered on my garments, and stained all my apparel. 4 For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption had come.
Isaiah 34:
5 For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; behold, it descends for judgment upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction. 6 The Lord has a sword; it is sated with blood; it is gorged with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom. 7 Wild oxen shall fall with them, and young steers with the mighty bulls. Their land shall drink its fill of blood, and their soil shall be gorged with fat.
8 For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
If we interpret Edom as a representative of the many nations who are against Israel’s God and His people, then it need not be a specific place. It could represent many places. Even still, the fate of the people pointed out by the Edom metaphor is still interesting. There are certainly nations today who might be identifiable as nations with a particular hatred of Israel. We will get to that as we begin to study the text.
Overall, my approach to this study will be to go through it, verse by verse, and to lean on Bible Commentaries and other outside sources (general sources like Wikipedia and scholarly articles of various stripes) for help in understanding the material.
I hope that anyone who reads my posts on Obadiah gets something beneficial out of it.
