--- title: "Obadiah 1 - Study King James Bible with keil and delitzsch old testament commentary" description: "Read Obadiah 1 with keil and delitzsch old testament commentary commentary. 1 The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord GOD concerning Edom; We have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among the heathen, Arise" image: "/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg" url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1" --- [ Read](/kjv/obadiah/1)[ Commentary](/study/obadiah/1)[ Interlinear](/interlinear/obadiah/1) Audio 1 The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord GOD concerning Edom; We have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among the heathen, Arise ye, and let us rise up against her in battle. 2 Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen: thou art greatly despised. 3 ¶ The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation *is* high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? 4 Though thou exalt *thyself* as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD. 5 If thieves came to thee, if robbers by night, (how art thou cut off!) would they not have stolen till they had enough? if the grapegatherers came to thee, would they not leave *some* grapes?* 6 How are *the things* of Esau searched out! *how* are his hidden things sought up! 7 All the men of thy confederacy have brought thee *even* to the border: the men that were at peace with thee have deceived thee, *and* prevailed against thee; *they that eat* thy bread have laid a wound under thee: *there is* none understanding in him.*** 8 Shall I not in that day, saith the LORD, even destroy the wise *men* out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau? 9 And thy mighty *men*, O Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of the mount of Esau may be cut off by slaughter. 10 ¶ For *thy* violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever. 11 In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers carried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou *wast* as one of them.* 12 But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became a stranger; neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction; neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress.* 13 Thou shouldest not have entered into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity; yea, thou shouldest not have looked on their affliction in the day of their calamity, nor have laid *hands* on their substance in the day of their calamity;* 14 Neither shouldest thou have stood in the crossway, to cut off those of his that did escape; neither shouldest thou have delivered up those of his that did remain in the day of distress.* 15 For the day of the LORD *is* near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head. 16 For as ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, *so* shall all the heathen drink continually, yea, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been.* 17 ¶ But upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.** 18 And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be *any* remaining of the house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken *it*. 19 And *they of* the south shall possess the mount of Esau; and *they of* the plain the Philistines: and they shall possess the fields of Ephraim, and the fields of Samaria: and Benjamin *shall possess* Gilead. 20 And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel *shall possess* that of the Canaanites, *even* unto Zarephath; and the captivity of Jerusalem, which *is* in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the south.* 21 And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the LORD’s. [Amos 9](/study/amos/9) [Jonah 1](/study/jonah/1) ## Commentary To verse 1 Edom's Ruin, setting forth, in the first place, the purpose of God to make Edom small through the medium of hostile nations, and to hurl it down from the impregnable heights of its rocky castles ([Obadiah 1:1-4](/kjv/obadiah/1/1-4)); and then depicting, in lively colours, how it will be plundered by enemies, forsaken and deceived by allies and friends, and perish in helplessness and impotence ([Obadiah 1:5-9](/kjv/obadiah/1/5-9)). [Obadiah 1:1](/kjv/obadiah/1/1) contains, in addition to the brief heading, the introduction to the prophecy, which gives in a brief form the substance of the first section: *“Thus hath the Lord Jehovah spoken of Edom, A report have we heard from Jehovah, and a messenger is sent among the nations: Up, and let us arise against it in battle.”* The first clause, לאדום ... כּה אמר , does not harmonize with what follows, inasmuch as we should expect it to be followed with a declaration made by Jehovah Himself, instead of which there follow simply tidings heard from Jehovah. The difficulty cannot be removed by assuming that these introductory words are spurious, or were added by a later prophet (Eichhorn, Ewald, and others); for the interpolator could not fail to observe the incongruity of these words just as well as Obadiah. Moreover, לאדום could not be omitted from the opening, because it is required not only by the suffix in עליה (against *her*), but also by the direct addresses in [Obadiah 1:2](/kjv/obadiah/1/2). Nor is the assumption that the prophet suddenly altered the construction any more satisfactory, or that the declaration of Jehovah announced in כּה אמר וגו (“thus saith the Lord”) commences in [Obadiah 1:2](/kjv/obadiah/1/2), and that the words from שׁמוּעה to the end of the verse form an explanatory parenthesis to כּה אמר וגו ot sisehtnera . For such an alteration of the construction at the very beginning of the address is hardly conceivable; and the parenthetical explanation of the last three clauses of [Obadiah 1:1](/kjv/obadiah/1/1) is at variance with their contents, which do not form by any means a subordinate thought, but rather the main thought of the following address. No other course remains, therefore, than to take these introductory words by themselves, as Michaelis, Maurer, and Caspari have done, in which case כה אמר does not announce the actual words of Jehovah in the stricter sense, but is simply meant to affirm that the prophet uttered what follows *jussu Jehovae*, or *divinitus monitus*, so that כה אמר is really equivalent to diber זה הדּבר אשׁר דּבּר in [Isaiah 16:13](/kjv/isaiah/16/13), as Theodoret has explained it. לאדום , not “to Edom,” but with reference to, or of, Edom. On the occurrence of *Y e hōvâh* after *'Adōnâi*, see the comm. on [Genesis 2:4](/kjv/genesis/2/4). What Obadiah saw as a word of the Lord was the tidings heard from the Lord, and the divine message sent to the nations to rise up for war against Edom. The plural שׁמענוּ (*we* have heard) is communicative. The prophet includes himself in the nation (Israel), which has heard the tidings in him and through him. This implies that the tidings were of the greatest interest to Israel, and would afford it consolation. Jeremiah ([Jeremiah 49:14](/kjv/jeremiah/49/14)) has removed the pregnant character of the expression, by introducing the singular שׁמעתּי (I have heard). The next clause, “and an ambassador,” etc., might be taken, as it has been by Luther, as a statement of the import of the news, namely, that a messenger had been sent; inasmuch as in Hebrew a sentence is frequently co-ordinated with the preceding one by *Vav cop.*, when it ought really to be subordinated to it so far as the sense is concerned, from a simple preference for the parallelism of the clauses. But the address gains in force, if we take the clause as a co-ordinate one, just as it reads, viz., as a declaration of the steps already taken by the Lord for carrying out the resolution which had been heard of by report. In this case the substance of the report is not given till the last clause of the verse; the summons of the ambassador sent among the nations, “to rise up for war against Edom,” indicating at the same time the substance of the report which Israel has heard. The perfect *shullâch* with *qâmets* in the pause, which is changed by Jeremiah into the less appropriate passive participle *kal*, corresponds to שׁמענוּ , and expresses in prophetic form the certainty of the accomplishment of the purpose of God. The sending of the messenger (*tsı̄r* as in [Isaiah 18:2](/kjv/isaiah/18/2)) among the nations ( ב as in [Judges 6:35](/kjv/judges/6/35)) is an assurance that the nations will rise up at the instigation of Jehovah to war against Edom (compare [Isaiah 13:17](/kjv/isaiah/13/17); [Jeremiah 51:1](/kjv/jeremiah/51/1), [Jeremiah 51:11](/kjv/jeremiah/51/11)). The plural *nâqūmâh* (let us rise up), in the words of the messenger, may be explained on the simple ground that the messenger speaks in the name of the sender. The sender is Jehovah, who will also rise up along with the nations for war against Edom, placing Himself at their head as leader and commander (compare [Joel 2:11](/kjv/joel/2/11); [Isaiah 13:4-5](/kjv/isaiah/13/4-5)). עליה , against Edom, construed as a land or kingdom, *gener. faem.* The fact that it is the nations generally that are here summoned to make war upon Edom, and not only one nation in particular, points at once to the fact that Edom is regarded as a type of the power of the world, and its hostility to God, the destruction of which is here foretold. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com","name":"Real Bible Believers","description":"RBB","publisher":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/search?q={search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","width":672,"height":448,"caption":"Real Bible Believers"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1#webpage","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1","name":"Obadiah 1 - Study King James Bible with keil and delitzsch old testament commentary","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1#primaryimage"},"author":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"description":"Read Obadiah 1 with keil and delitzsch old testament commentary commentary. 1 The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord GOD concerning Edom; We have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among the heathen, Arise","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/","name":"Home"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study","name":"Study Bible"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary","name":"keil and delitzsch old testament commentary"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah","name":"Obadiah"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":5,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/obadiah/1","name":"1"}}]},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#personlogo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/android-chrome-512x512.png","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/android-chrome-512x512.png","width":512,"height":512},"logo":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#personlogo"},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/RBiblebeliever","https://www.facebook.com/RBibleBelievers"]}]} ```