Obadiah

Obadiah (Heb. ‘Ovadyah, “servant of the LORD”) is the author of the shortest book in the Old Testament — twenty-one verses entirely devoted to a vision against Edom, the nation descended from Esau and settled in the high red cliffs of Seir south of the Dead Sea. The traditional evangelical dating sets him shortly after the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 BC, the occasion he describes in verses 11–14: Edom stood on the day Jerusalem was plundered, gloated as strangers carried away her treasures, cut off the fugitives at the crossroads, and handed up the survivors to the enemy. A few interpreters prefer an earlier setting under the Philistine and Arab raid in the reign of Jehoram (2Ch.21.16–17, c. 845 BC). Either way Obadiah’s message is the same: the Edomite pride that has nested itself among the stars will be brought down by the LORD, “for the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen” (Oba.1.15), but “upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness” (Oba.1.17). The book ends with the saying “the kingdom shall be the LORD’s” (Oba.1.21).