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POSTED
11 AUGUST, 2011
The Message of Obadiah
by
J.K. McKee
editor@tnnonline.net
The Book of Obadiah, at only twenty-one verses,
is not something that a great deal of Bible
readers put any amount of time into really
contemplating. Unlike a short letter like
Philemon, which was composed at the same time of
Colossians, there is really no text that Obadiah
can be amended to as a kind of “appendix.” It is
easy when accessing commentaries on the Minor
Prophets (also called the Twelve Prophets), to
just flip over the Book of Obadiah, and not
really pay any attention to what it communicated
to an audience within Ancient Israel.
How important is the Book of Obadiah? Well for
starters, the name of the Prophet it features,
Ovadyah, means “servant of the
LORD.”
Given the fact that Obadiah has a generic name
like this, some might be tempted to think that
the prophecies delivered are actually via some
kind of an anonymous voice. Perhaps this servant
of God, whoever he was, was actually just a
literary figure declaring a message regarding
something that had already transpired? These
might be some of the claims against the genuine
involvement of a real prophet named Obadiah,
that one might encounter, and it could be used
to dismiss the value of a text like the Book of
Obadiah. If we treat the Book of Obadiah as the
genuine product of a prophet named Obadiah, even
if some of the prophecies might be considered
“fulfilled—the text still has important lessons
to teach us about God’s involvements in human
affairs. But how can any of us evaluate if
Obadiah is largely “fulfilled,” if we have
perhaps not even glanced through it?
The main focus of the Book of Obadiah is that
a rebuke is issued by the Lord against Edom.
There is no full agreement among conservative
interpreters as to when this was originally
delivered. Some favor an earlier dating for
Obadiah’s prophecies, during the reign of
Jehoram, while others favor a dating sometimes
subsequent to the fall of Judah to the
Babylonians. The point to be taken from the
tenor of Obadiah, is that the Edomites were not
to rejoice over the fall of their neighbor. The
Lord decrees,
“See, I will make you small among the nations;
you will be utterly despised. 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?’ Though you soar like the
eagle and make your nest among the stars, from
there I will bring you down” (Obadiah 2-4).
The rebuking from the Lord, upon the Edomites,
that is intended to humiliate their great pride,
makes up a considerable bulk of the short Book
of Obadiah:
“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? But how Esau will be ransacked, his
hidden treasures pillaged! 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. ‘In that day,’ declares the
LORD,
‘will I not destroy the wise men of Edom, men of
understanding in the mountains of Esau? Your
warriors, O Teman, will be terrified, and
everyone in Esau's mountains will be cut down in
the slaughter. Because of the violence against
your brother Jacob, you will be covered with
shame; you will be destroyed forever. 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.
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.
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. You should not wait at
the crossroads to cut down their fugitives, nor
hand over their survivors in the day of their
trouble’” (Obadiah 5-14).
While some might think that Obadiah has nothing
to say about the future, there is, in fact a
future word describing the Day of the Lord, and
the end-time restoration of Israel:
“‘The day of the
LORD is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be
done to you; your deeds will return upon your
own head. Just as you drank on my holy hill, so
all the nations will drink continually; they
will drink and drink and be as if they had never
been. But on Mount Zion will be deliverance; it
will be holy, and the house of Jacob will
possess its inheritance. The house of Jacob will
be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame; the
house of Esau will be stubble, and they will set
it on fire and consume it. There will be no
survivors from the house of Esau.’ The
LORD has spoken. People from the Negev will occupy the
mountains of Esau, and people from the foothills
will possess the land of the Philistines. They
will occupy the fields of Ephraim and Samaria,
and Benjamin will possess Gilead. This company
of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan will
possess the land
as far as Zarephath; the
exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad will
possess the towns of the Negev. Deliverers will
go up on Mount Zion to govern the mountains of
Esau. And the kingdom will be the
LORD's”
(Obadiah 15-21).
When was the last time that you took
a look
at the Book of Obadiah? Even if short, Obadiah
does have something to communicate about the
future. The Edomites were told by God not to
rejoice over the downfall of Judah. Sometime in
the future, Obadiah’s word about a final
judgment to be issued by the Lord upon Edom,
will come to pass. Perhaps we need not skip
over Obadiah any longer, as it does contain some
key statements regarding the restoration of all
Israel… How will any of us—most
especially Messianic Believers—learn to
appreciate the short, but distinct, place of the
Book of Obadiah within the Tanach canon?
J.K. McKee
(B.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A., Asbury
Theological Seminary) is the editor of TNN
Online (www.tnnonline.net) and is a Messianic
apologist.
He is a 2009 recipient of the Zondervan Biblical
Languages Award for Greek.
He
is author of
numerous books, dealing with a wide range of
topics that are important for today’s
Messianic Believers. He has also written many
articles on theological issues, and is presently
focusing his attention on Messianic commentaries
of various books of the Bible.
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