Judah’s Restoration (17–21)

No survivors (18). Powerful kings showed no mercy to rebellious vassals. Thus Assyrian kings boasted that “not a man escaped” when their troops crushed rebels who broke their oaths of loyalty (see sidebar in “Rebels Annihilated”). In the same way, God pronounced his verdict on nations who defied him.

Expansion of Israel

The Negev … Esau (19). Edom’s demise, in common with the disappearance of other local enemies of God’s people, will allow dispossessed Israelites to occupy their territories, moving from the Negev eastward into Edom, from the foothills westward to the Philistine cities on the coast, back into the hill country of Israel, with the small tribe of Benjamin gaining the rich pastures of Transjordanian Gilead.

The land of the Philistines (19). The southwestern corner of the Promised Land was already in Philistine hands before Israel arrived in Canaan (Ex. 13:17). Philistines, perhaps of Indo-European stock, moved from Crete and the Aegean, settling in their five cities (Josh. 13:3) with fertile land for grain and olives. There they remained obstacles to Israel even after the Exile (Neh. 13:23–24).

Canaan (20). The Hebrew text has “who are Canaanites,” which may mean “who are among the Canaanites,” parallel to “in Sepharad.” When the boundaries of the Promised Land are listed (e.g., Num. 34:2–12), they include the whole of the coast, from the Egyptian frontier to Byblos in Lebanon, but the Israelite tribes never occupied all of it (see Josh. 13:2–6).

Zarephath (20). This town (now Sarafand; Sarepta in Greek; see Luke 4:26) is ten miles south of Sidon, in the northern part of the unconquered territory (Josh. 13:4, 6; Judg. 1:31). In the days of the kings of Israel and Judah this was Phoenician land, each major city controlling the area around it. Zarephath fell under the sway of Sidon, then of Tyre. Obadiah foresees Israelites living as exiles in Canaan, at last taking the region for themselves.

Sepharad (20). This is the Hebrew rendering of the name of the capital of Lydia in western Turkey, written sprd in an Aramaic inscription of the fourth century B.C. found there.18 This place of exile, remote from Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C., became the term for western Europe in later Jewish communities, as opposed to Ashkenaz (“Scythia”), which denoted eastern Europe. The oracle prophesies their restoration from the distant north to the southernmost part of the Promised Land. Effectively, the whole of the Promised Land will become Israel’s again.

To govern (21). A small kingdom could become a vassal of a greater power, retaining much of its independence as long as it was loyal. Alliance with the suzerain’s enemy or other forms of rebellion brought heavy punishment (see sidebar on “Rebels Annihilated”) and absorption of the kingdom into the suzerain’s realm under a governor of his choice (see sidebar on “Governor Appointed”). That will be Edom’s destiny, becoming part of the kingdom of Israel’s God; she will become a servant of the Lord, like Obadiah.

Bibliography

Ackroyd, P. R. “Obadiah.” Pages 2–4 in vol. 5, Anchor Bible Dictionary. Ed. D. N. Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Ackroyd summarizes the standard “liberal-critical” approach, with emphasis on intertextual biblical references.

Baker, D. W. “Obadiah.” Pages 12–44 in Obadiah, Jonah and Micah. D. W. Baker, T. D. Alexander, and B. K. Waltke. TOTC. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1988. Baker offers a succinct, basic commentary.

Bartlett, J. R. Edom and the Edomites. JSOTSup 77. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989. Bartlett discusses what was known of the history of Edom until 1989, dealing with the biblical text from the “liberal-critical” viewpoint.

Niehaus, J. “Obadiah.” Pages 495–541 in vol. 2, The Minor Prophets: An Exegetical and Expository Commentary. Ed. T. E. McComiskey. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993. Niehaus offers a detailed exegesis, drawing extensively on ancient Near Eastern sources.

Chapter Notes

Main Text Notes

1. K. A. Kitchen, “The Egyptian Evidence on Ancient Jordan,” in Early Edom and Moab, ed. P. Bienkowski (Sheffield Archaeological Monographs 7; Sheffield: Collis, 1992), 26–27.

2. A. Millard, “Assyrian Involvement in Edom,” in Early Edom and Moab, ed. P. Bienkowski, 35–36.

3. See J. R. Bartlett, Edom and the Edomites (JSOTSup 77; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989).

4. See b. Sanh. 39b.

5. The case for the ninth-century date has been well stated by J. Niehaus in his detailed commentary, “Obadiah,” in The Minor Prophets: An Exegetical and Expository Commentary, ed. T. E. McComiskey (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 496–502.

6. P. Bienkowski, “New Evidence on Edom in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods,” in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor of J. Maxwell Miller, ed. J. A. Dearman and M. P. Graham (JSOTSup 343; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 198–213.

7. See A. Millard, “Oral Proclamation and Written Record: Speaking and Preserving Information in Ancient Israel,” in Michael: Historical, Epigraphic and Biblical Studies in Honor of Professor Michael Heltzer, ed. Y. Avishur and R. Deutsch (Tel Aviv/Jaffa: Archaeological Center Publications, 1999), 237–41.

8. See C. M. Bennett, “Notes and News,” PEQ 98 (1966): 123–26; N. Avigad and B. Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Academy, 1997), 388, no. 1049.

9. See S. Hart, “Sela: The Rock of Edom?” PEQ 118 (1986): 91–95.

10. El Amarna Letter 162; see W. L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992), 249.

11. G. Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (SBLWAW 7; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 97, 141. For the Egyptian-Hittite treaty, see also ANET, 199, 202.

12. R. de Vaux, “Teman, ville ou région d’Edom,” RB 76 (1969): 379–85.

13. M. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (SBLWAW 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 176, B1.

14. Laws of Eshnunna 51, cf. Hammurabi’s Laws 15, see M. Roth, Law Collections, 67, 84; COS, 2.131:335, 338.

15. See A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000–586 B.C.E. (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 465–70.

16. See E. M. Yamauchi, “Banquets in the Biblical World,” Proceedings Eastern Great Lakes & Midwest Bible Society 22 (2002): 147–56.

17. See B. R. Foster, “Epic of Creation,” COS, 1.111; D. Pardee, “ʾIlu on a Toot,” COS, 1.97.

18. E. Littmann, Sardis VI. Lydian Inscriptions, Part 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1916), 23–38, pl. 14 and Frontispiece; H. Donner and W. Röllig, Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften, 3rd ed. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971–73), no. 260.

Sidebar and Chart Notes

A-1. R. Borger, Beiträge zur Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996), 21–23; cf. D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1927), 2:773; ANET, 294–95.

A-2. C. J. Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud,” Iraq 16 (1954): 179–80; cf. COS, 2.118d.