--- title: "Obadiah 1 - Study King James Bible with the church pulpit commentary" description: "Read Obadiah 1 with the church pulpit 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/the-church-pulpit-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 *OBADIAH* **‘The vision of Obadiah.’** ** [Obadiah 1:1](/kjv/obadiah/1/1)** ****I. Nothing is certainly known about the author of this brief prophecy.**—It forms the shortest separate book in the Old Testament, and it is nowhere quoted or referred to in the New. The first nine verses resemble [Jeremiah 49:7-22](/kjv/jeremiah/49/7-22) so closely and curiously that it appears as if one of the prophets must have borrowed from the other,—or, perhaps, both from some common source. The Book of Obadiah probably belongs to the period of the exile in Babylon. It is occupied almost entirely with a message of doom denounced upon Edom. For long generations the fierce children of Esau had made their home in the rocky fastnesses of Mount Seir,—whose red sandstone cliffs and chasms lie south of the Dead Sea, culminating in the summit of Mount Hor. Although the villages in this highland region resemble nests of wild birds, yet its terraces and gorges are well watered and fertile, and the Edomite ruled securely in this rich fortress-land. ‘Dweller in the clefts of the rock, the height is his habitation, that saith in his heart “Who shall bring me down to earth?” ’ **II. The ancient, traditional rivalry between Esau and Israel lasted on between their children through a thousand years.**—And when Jerusalem was destroyed and carried captive into Babylon, the crafty Edomite chiefs allied themselves with the enemy of Judea. They exulted when the holy city fell in ruins ( [Psalms 137:7](/kjv/psalms/137/7)). They cut off the escape of her fugitives, and mocked at her overthrow. The Jews never forgot or forgave this savage insolence of their kinsfolk. A fiery hatred of Edom smoulders through the prophets, and bursts into flame in this Book of Obadiah. Even the Evangelical prophet foresees the Divine Avenger clad in raiment which is deep dyed in Idumean blood ( [Isaiah 63:1-4](/kjv/isaiah/63/1-4)). And although we dare not call such a spirit the spirit of Christ, yet from one point of view these stern prophetic cries have an eternal meaning. They represent God’s abiding ‘malediction on a sin common alike to East and West, to churches, kingdoms, and individuals—the sin most difficult to be forgiven—the desertion of kinsmen by kinsmen, of friends by friends—the readiness to take advantage of the weaker side, hounding on the victorious party—“standing on the other side” on the day of sorest need.’ **III. Israel’s bitter wrath against Edom never died out.**—Herod the Great was doubly hated by patriotic Jews because of his Idumean blood. The rabbis make Edom into a kind of synonym for the worse enemies of Judaism. They took Edom as a type and emblem of Rome. They imagined ‘that Cæsar and Titus were Edomites by descent, and that the soul of Esau still lingered in the Christian persecutors of the race of Israel.’ Without endorsing such fantastic interpretations, we shall read a deep, true lesson for ourselves from Obadiah’s prophecy, if we take Edom to represent that selfish materialism which still remains the crafty and malignant adversary of the spiritual Church of God. Every good cause on earth—the cause of justice, or of liberty, or of temperance, or of purity, or of peace—has to fight against the same kind of foe,—just as cynical and insolent as Edom of old, and like Edom also, embattled and entrenched in some earthly vantage-ground of wealth and vested interest. There are institutions and monopolies and privileges mighty in our own land to-day, which, as we know full well, work poverty and misery and mischief among our brothers and sisters. When we feel ourselves mocked by those hostile powers it is good to remember that on each one of them God has written the curse of Edom. They are doomed already. ‘And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.’ **IV. It will be not less true if we identify Edom in a spiritual sense with ‘the world.**’—Every ardent Christian is engaged in deadly, irreconcilable warfare with that general assembly and church of the unfaithful. Leopardi has described it as ‘the praiser and upholder of all feigned virtues, the disparager and persecutor of all true ones; the derider of every exalted sentiment, provided it be but genuine, and of every tender affection, if such be but deep and heartfelt; that slave of the strong, that tyrant of the weak, that hater of the unfortunate, which Jesus Christ was the first to designate as “the world.” ’ When we know ourselves daunted and dismayed by the hateful conspiracy of evil prejudices and conventions, we take courage from the Easter certainty, that ‘the world’ is after all a conquered foe. He Who bids us be of good cheer goes on to say, ‘I have overcome the world’; and we have only to gather up the fruits of His eternal victory. **Illustration** ‘It may seem a far cry to this long-since extirpated tribe in the rocky clefts above the Jordan, and yet the worldling temper lives and scorns and exults in the day of the Church’s sorrow now as then. It is the temper revealed in Herod, “that fox,” as Jesus called him, with his scorn of Christ; and in Herodias, with her merciless revenge against John the Baptist. That temper is ever with us. Mr. Howells, the shrewd American observer, tells us in his *London Films* that as he stands at Hyde Park corner he marks the faces of those who drive out and in. The look on their faces is not simply authoritative, as all ruling races show. It is the look of the *authorised*. It displays openly a sense of security, through the wealth which has been safely invested, a self-sufficiency, which comes of proud independence of others, and, above all, a remorseless indifference to the needs and sorrows of others. That is the Edomite temper. Behind it there is a sheer unbelief in God, a heart-mockery of the ideals of Christ, a self-assertion against all the claims of religion which makes the word “gospel” a byword and jest. They are the people; for them all else exists; no one will pull them down from their seat. The calamities of a Church, its spoliation, the hardships of its preachers, the anguish of its people, are a theme for their scorn. Now and again one meets this temper in some successful man of the world, whose business has eaten up his humility and his reverence. As often it appears in some man of letters of a cheap and transient popularity. No man of Thackeray’s insight or of Matthew Arnold’s sympathy could ever play the part of the Edomite, however they might rebuke cant and expose unreality. But the Edomites of literature sit on high, and in their pride the “little ones” of Christ are their scorn.’ ```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/the-church-pulpit-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/the-church-pulpit-commentary/obadiah/1#webpage","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/obadiah/1","name":"Obadiah 1 - Study King James Bible with the church pulpit commentary","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/obadiah/1#primaryimage"},"author":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"description":"Read Obadiah 1 with the church pulpit 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/the-church-pulpit-commentary/obadiah/1#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/obadiah/1"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-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/the-church-pulpit-commentary","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary","name":"the church pulpit commentary"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/obadiah","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/obadiah","name":"Obadiah"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":5,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/obadiah/1","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-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"]}]} ```