CHAPTER 1
Here it is – the shortest book in the entire Old Testament –
the one-chapter wonder, Obadiah. We
know nothing about the author aside from this one book. Given that he doesn’t talk about himself, we
essentially know nothing about him.
OK, Obadiah apparently lived around the fall of Jerusalem.
We can pick that up from the subject matter.
The subject is the nearby kingdom of Edom, and Obadiah is in a seething
fury towards them because how they took advantage of the Hebrew when their
house fell. We saw similar criticisms
of them in the bigger prophets, and now we see it again here.
Essentially he curses out Edom and then calls for revenge:
“As you have done, so will be done to you!”
We were brothers, you fucks!
Jacob and Esau – and now look what you’ve done to us!
I wonder what the Edom response
would be. Traditionally, Israel was in
the superior position. That was the
case as far back as David, with Edom being a subject kingdom to Israel and then
Judah. Apparently the people of Edom
didn’t like that very much while the people of Jerusalem saw it as the natural
order of things. So you get Edom
kicking the Hebrew when their down and the Hebrew crying foul. Really, I don’t think the Hebrew have much
of a case. Edom was never one of the tribes of Israel. It was always a separate people – one taken
over by the Hebrew. So why should they
try to save the Hebrew? As far as the
Edomites are concerned, the fall of Jerusalem can be taken as a warning against
the dangers of hubris. When the Hebrew
thought they were the biggest buck in the area, they could do what they wanted,
but now they’ve run into a bigger power.
As they’ve reaped, so have they sown.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Yeah, that’s it.
That’s the entire thing. That’s
the entire fucking thing.
It’s a harsh, brutish, nasty and short chapter. All it does is denounce Edom and call for
its destruction. It’s just an attempt
to settle scores. And like I said
above, I think an Edom rebuttal would make more since than this Hebrew
denouncing.
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