TEXT [Commentary]

  I.   The Day of Edom’s Destruction (1:1b-14)

A.   The Call to Battle against Edom (1:1b)

1b We have heard a message from the LORD

that an ambassador was sent to the nations to say,

“Get ready, everyone!

Let’s assemble our armies and attack Edom!”

NOTES

1:1b We have heard. The parallel in Jer 49:14 reads, “I have heard.” The plural here may indicate Obadiah’s reception of the same message Jeremiah received (hence the plural we), or the plural we could include his audience in the implications of the divine message. Niehaus (1993:513) renders the compound preposition me’eth [TH4480/854, ZH4946/907] (lit., “from” + “with”) as “straight from” and adds that this “suggests that the immediate source of the verb’s action is Yahweh himself.” The message is introduced in standard formula: “Thus says the Lord” (a phrase that occurs 133 times in the Latter Prophets), attesting to the fact that the prophet is God’s messenger (Raabe 1996:99-105).

that an ambassador was sent. The NLT takes the Hebrew coordinate clause as subordinate to the hearing (indirect discourse); so also Luther’s translation (“We have heard from the Lord that an emissary was sent among the heathen”). NIV and GW take the sending of the ambassador as direct discourse—the clause is a statement of the import of the news, that is, that a messenger had been sent. As the text stands, the particle more naturally introduces a statement of the steps that God had already taken for carrying out the message that was heard. “The Lord who is author of the oracle was already taking steps to carry out its message in clear demonstration to the faithful that he was Lord of history” (Allen 1976:145).

Get ready. . . . let’s . . . attack. The two verbs reflect a typical Hebrew sequence in which the imperative with a cohortative yields virtual subordination to express intended purpose: “Arise in order to attack” (Waltke and O’Connor 1990:574-575). Although the Hebrew prepositional phrase reads “against her” (cf. Jer 49:14, NASB) rather than the expected masculine singular suffix used elsewhere in Obadiah when referring to Edom, the prophets are known to alternate between genders when referring to Edom (Jer 49:14, 17, NASB). Such variation may be accounted for on the basis of an implied head construct noun ’erets [TH776, ZH824] (land) before Edom. Thus, in some cases authors retain the sense of the natural head; in others they make agreement with the resultant surface structure. In any case, we need not emend the text on the basis of Jer 49:14 or LXX; nor do we need to view the preceding shullakh [TH7971, ZH8938] (was sent) as a defectively written pual participle (Allen 1976:144), for the form is fully explicable as a pual suffix conjugation as it stands. If a participle is deemed necessary, one might suggest that the preceding Mem of baggoyim [TH1471, ZH1580] (to the nations) serves as a double-duty consonant to be read also with shullakh. (For the principle of double-duty elements, see Lehman 1967:93-101.)

COMMENTARY [Text]

The summoning of the nations to battle demonstrates that human history moves at two levels. Behind the actions of nations stands the person of God himself, the controller of history. Thus, while people act out their plans, they are nonetheless circumscribed by the all-encompassing purposes of God, neither compromising human accountability nor God’s standards of justice. Here the sovereignty of God is wedded to the theme of the Divine Warrior who enters the arena of human political affairs to bring judgment to the wicked and deliverance to his own. The blending of these two themes gives assurance to the weary believer that however dark the circumstances, the battle is the Lord’s (1 Sam 17:47; 2 Chr 20:15). The scriptural perspective that the prophet’s words are the special revelation of God is reinforced here. Obadiah reports that what he will say stems both from God’s revelation to his prophet in a visionary experience and via a divine message. The truth that God can and does reveal himself to mankind thus finds specific confirmation here, a fact repeatedly reported by the other prophets.