1 The vision of Obadiah. This is what the Lord Yahweh says about Edom. We have heard news from Yahweh, and an ambassador is sent among the nations, saying, "Arise, and let's rise up against her in battle.
Thus says Yahweh: "For three transgressions of Edom, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment; Because he pursued his brother with the sword, And cast off all pity, And his anger raged continually, And he kept his wrath forever; But I will send a fire on Teman, And it will devour the palaces of Bozrah."
Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Because Edom has dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and has greatly offended, and revenged himself on them; therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, I will stretch out my hand on Edom, and will cut off man and animal from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman; even to Dedan shall they fall by the sword. I will lay my vengeance on Edom by the hand of my people Israel; and they shall do in Edom according to my anger and according to my wrath; and they shall know my vengeance, says the Lord Yahweh.
Who is this who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this who is glorious in his clothing, marching in the greatness of his strength? I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Why are you red in your clothing, and your garments like him who treads in the wine vat? I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the peoples there was no man with me: yes, I trod them in my anger, and trampled them in my wrath; and their lifeblood is sprinkled on my garments, and I have stained all my clothing. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come. I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore my own arm brought salvation to me; and my wrath, it upheld me. I trod down the peoples in my anger, and made them drunk in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.
but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness." Whereas Edom says, "We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places;" thus says Yahweh of Hosts, "They shall build, but I will throw down; and men will call them 'The Wicked Land,' even the people against whom Yahweh shows wrath forever."
Egypt will be a desolation, And Edom will be a desolate wilderness, For the violence done to the children of Judah, Because they have shed innocent blood in their land.
and tell it, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I am against you, Mount Seir, and I will stretch out my hand against you, and I will make you a desolation and an astonishment. I will lay your cities waste, and you shall be desolate; and you shall know that I am Yahweh. Because you have had a perpetual enmity, and have given over the children of Israel to the power of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end; therefore, as I live, says the Lord Yahweh, I will prepare you to blood, and blood shall pursue you: since you have not hated blood, therefore blood shall pursue you. Thus will I make Mount Seir an astonishment and a desolation; and I will cut off from it him who passes through and him who returns. I will fill its mountains with its slain: in your hills and in your valleys and in all your watercourses shall they fall who are slain with the sword. I will make you a perpetual desolation, and your cities shall not be inhabited; and you shall know that I am Yahweh. Because you have said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas Yahweh was there: therefore, as I live, says the Lord Yahweh, I will do according to your anger, and according to your envy which you have shown out of your hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I shall judge you. You shall know that I, Yahweh, have heard all your insults which you have spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to devour. You have magnified yourselves against me with your mouth, and have multiplied your words against me: I have heard it. Thus says the Lord Yahweh: When the whole earth rejoices, I will make you desolate. As you did rejoice over the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do to you: you shall be desolate, Mount Seir, and all Edom, even all of it; and they shall know that I am Yahweh.
Prepare you war against her; arise, and let us go up at noon. Woe to us! for the day declines, for the shadows of the evening are stretched out. Arise, and let us go up by night, and let us destroy her palaces.
Come near, you nations, to hear; and listen, you peoples: let the earth hear, and the fullness of it; the world, and all things that come forth from it. For Yahweh has indignation against all the nations, and wrath against all their host: he has utterly destroyed them, he has delivered them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies shall come up; and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. All the host of the sky shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fade away, as the leaf fades from off the vine, and as a fading [leaf] from the fig tree. For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky: behold, it shall come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, to judgment. The sword of Yahweh is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. The wild-oxen shall come down with them, and the bulls with the bulls: and their land shall be drunken with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. For Yahweh has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. The streams of [Edom] shall be turned into pitch, and the dust of it into sulfur, and the land of it shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke of it shall go up for ever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever. But the pelican and the porcupine shall possess it; and the owl and the raven shall dwell therein: and he will stretch over it the line of confusion, and the plummet of emptiness. They shall call the nobles of it to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all its princes shall be nothing. Thorns shall come up in its palaces, nettles and thistles in the fortresses of it; and it shall be a habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches. The wild animals of the desert shall meet with the wolves, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; yes, the night-monster shall settle there, and shall find her a place of rest. There shall the dart-snake make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shade; yes, there shall the kites be gathered, everyone with her mate. Seek you out of the book of Yahweh, and read: no one of these shall be missing, none shall want her mate; for my mouth, it has commanded, and his Spirit, it has gathered them. He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them by line: they shall possess it forever; from generation to generation shall they dwell therein.
The burden of Dumah. One calls to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?
Remember, Yahweh, against the children of Edom, The day of Jerusalem; Who said, "Raze it! Raze it even to its foundation!"
that sends ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of papyrus on the waters, [saying], Go, you swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people awesome from their beginning onward, a nation that measures out and treads down, whose land the rivers divide! All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, look; and when the trumpet is blown, listen.
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you aren't troubled, for all this must happen, but the end is not yet.
Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom, that dwell in the land of Uz: The cup shall pass through to you also; you shall be drunken, and shall make yourself naked. The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, daughter of Zion; he will no more carry you away into captivity: He will visit your iniquity, daughter of Edom; he will uncover your sins.
Don't let your heart faint, neither fear for the news that shall be heard in the land; for news shall come one year, and after that in another year [shall come] news, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.
Set up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz: appoint a marshal against her; cause the horses to come up as the rough canker-worm. Prepare against her the nations, the kings of the Medes, the governors of it, and all the deputies of it, and all the land of their dominion.
For, behold, I will stir up and cause to come up against Babylon a company of great nations from the north country; and they shall set themselves in array against her; from there she shall be taken: their arrows shall be as of an expert mighty man; none shall return in vain. Chaldea shall be a prey: all who prey on her shall be satisfied, says Yahweh. Because you are glad, because you rejoice, O you who plunder my heritage, because you are wanton as a heifer that treads out [the grain], and neigh as strong horses; your mother shall be utterly disappointed; she who bore you shall be confounded: behold, she shall be the least of the nations, a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert. Because of the wrath of Yahweh she shall not be inhabited, but she shall be wholly desolate: everyone who goes by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues. Set yourselves in array against Babylon round about, all you who bend the bow; shoot at her, spare no arrows: for she has sinned against Yahweh. Shout against her round about: she has submitted herself; her bulwarks are fallen, her walls are thrown down; for it is the vengeance of Yahweh: take vengeance on her; as she has done, do to her.
Of Edom. Thus says Yahweh of Hosts: Is wisdom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom vanished? Flee you, turn back, dwell in the depths, inhabitants of Dedan; for I will bring the calamity of Esau on him, the time that I shall visit him. If grape-gatherers came to you, would they not leave some gleaning grapes? if thieves by night, wouldn't they destroy until they had enough? But I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret places, and he shall not be able to hide himself: his seed is destroyed, and his brothers, and his neighbors; and he is no more. Leave your fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let your widows trust in me. For thus says Yahweh: Behold, they to whom it didn't pertain to drink of the cup shall assuredly drink; and are you he who shall altogether go unpunished? you shall not go unpunished, but you shall surely drink. For I have sworn by myself, says Yahweh, that Bozrah shall become an astonishment, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all the cities of it shall be perpetual wastes. I have heard news from Yahweh, and an ambassador is sent among the nations, [saying], Gather yourselves together, and come against her, and rise up to the battle. For, behold, I have made you small among the nations, and despised among men. As for your terror, the pride of your heart has deceived you, O you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, who hold the height of the hill: though you should make your nest as high as the eagle, I will bring you down from there, says Yahweh. Edom shall become an astonishment: everyone who passes by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues of it. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbor cities of it, says Yahweh, no man shall dwell there, neither shall any son of man sojourn therein. Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the pride of the Jordan against the strong habitation: for I will suddenly make them run away from it; and whoever is chosen, him will I appoint over it: for who is like me? and who will appoint me a time? and who is the shepherd who will stand before me? Therefore hear the counsel of Yahweh, that he has taken against Edom; and his purposes, that he has purposed against the inhabitants of Teman: Surely they shall drag them away, [even] the little ones of the flock; surely he shall make their habitation desolate over them. The earth trembles at the noise of their fall; there is a cry, the noise which is heard in the Red Sea. Behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle, and spread out his wings against Bozrah: and the heart of the mighty men of Edom at that day shall be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.
Then took I the cup at Yahweh's hand, and made all the nations to drink, to whom Yahweh had sent me:
Behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will punish all those who are circumcised in [their] uncircumcision: Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that have the corners [of their hair] cut off, who dwell in the wilderness; for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Obadiah 1
Commentary on Obadiah 1 Matthew Henry Commentary
An Exposition, With Practical Observations, of
The Prophecy of Obadiah
Chapter 1
This book is wholly concerning Edom, a nation nearly allied and near adjoining to Israel, and yet an enemy to the seed of Jacob, inheriting the enmity of their father Esau to Jacob. Now here we have, after the preface (v. 1).
Oba 1:1-9
Edom is the nation against which this prophecy is levelled, and which, some think, is put for all the enemies of Israel, that shall be brought down first or last. The rabbin by Edom understand Rome. Rome Christians they understand it of, and have an implacable enmity to it a such; but, if we understand it of Rome antichristian, we shall find the passages of it applicable enough. And though Edom was mortified in the times of the Maccabees, as it had been before by Jehoshaphat, yet its destruction seems to have been typical, as their father Esau's rejection, and to have had further reference to the destruction of the enemies of the gospel-church; for so shall all God's enemies perish; and we find (Isa. 34:5) the sword of the Lord coming down upon Idumea, to signify the general day of God's recompences for the controversy of Zion, v. 8. Some have well observed that it could not but be a great temptation to the people of Israel, when they saw themselves, who were the children of beloved Jacob, in trouble, and the Edomites, not only prospering, but triumphing over them in their troubles; and therefore God gives them a prospect of the destruction of Edom, which should be total and final, and of a happy issue of their own correction. Now we may observe here,
Oba 1:10-16
When we have read Edom's doom, no less than utter ruin, it is natural to ask, Why, what evil has he done? What is the ground of God's controversy with him? Many things, no doubt, were amiss in Edom; they were a sinful people, and a people laden with iniquity. But that one single crime which is laid to their charge, as filling their measure and bringing this ruin upon them, that for which they here stand indicted, of which they are convicted, and for which they are condemned, is the injury they had done to the people of God (v. 10): "It is for thy violence against thy brother Jacob, that ancient and hereditary grudge which thou hast borne to the people of Israel, that all this shame shall cover thee and thou shalt be cut off for ever.' Note, Injuries to men are affronts to God, the righteous God, that loveth righteousness and hateth wickedness; and, as the Judge of all the earth, he will give redress to those that suffer wrong and take vengeance on those that do wrong. All violence, all unrighteousness, is sin; but it is a great aggravation of the violence if it be done either,
In the following verses we are told more particularly,
Oba 1:17-21
After the destruction of the church's enemies is threatened, which will be completely accomplished in the great day of recompence, and that judgment for which Christ came once, and will come again, into this world, here follow precious promises of the salvation of the church, with which this prophecy concludes, and those of Joel and Amos did, which, however they might be in part fulfilled in the return of the Jews out of Babylon notwithstanding the triumphs of Edom in their captivity, as if it were perpetual, are yet, doubtless, to have their full accomplishment in that great salvation wrought out by Jesus Christ, to which all the prophets bore witness. It is promised here,