February 22, 2019: Day 83 – Obadiah

Obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament only containing verses.  In Hebrew the word Obadiah means “servant of Yah(weh)”, which is a very specific title often given to the prophets as those who spoke that which the Lord commanded.  So, from this, we assume that Obadiah was a prophet.  He probably lived around the time of the Babylonian exile and destruction of Jerusalem, and we can deduce that simply from the content of these verses.  That would place him around 586 BC.  

All of these verses are a castigation against Edom who is considered the brother of Judah.  So, let’s speak geographically.  Edom was a border nation on the east side of Israel and Judah was basically Israel.  It isn’t that clear cut, but for the sake of this blog, let’s go with that.  They have historical ties as nations.  Edom was said to come from Esau and Israel was said to come from Jacob.  As a result these were brother nations.  Remember Esau and Jacob and their father Isaac?  Look at Genesis 25 and it should bring it back to your mind.

You can see that from vs.10-11 where the Scripture says that you stood aside while your brother was being taken to school (my words).  It states that as your brother was getting his lunch handed to him you did absolutely nothing (again, my words).  I’ll never forget when I was a freshman in high school and my brother was a senior and we went to Wawa and someone wanted to pick a fight with me.  Well, once my brother showed up that wasn’t going to happen.  It is what you expect with brothers, they stand up for each other no matter what the odds are.  

So the prophet speaks out strongly against Edom because they backed down.  Now, historically we know that Edom was also ravaged and taken into captivity by the Babylonians.  So there probably wasn’t anything they could have done. The prophet speaks of a time when Israel will bounce back and reclaim the land that was lost to them.  Well, that was short.  We move on to our last week in Micah.