Calamity for Edom

No one escapes Jehovah’s judgment. Obadiah’s prophecy, uttered about 607 B.C.E., foretold the expulsion of the Edomites from their land despite their seemingly secure position high “among the stars.” And although the personal life of this Bible writer is not revealed, he lives up to the meaning of his name, “Servant of Jehovah.” How? By heralding a devastating judgment. When Edom falls, she will be completely plundered by friends in covenant with her. Not even her wise and mighty ones will survive.​—Verses 1-9.

God brings calamity upon those guilty of violence against his people. What is the reason for the Edomites’ calamity? Repeated acts of violence against the sons of Jacob, their brothers. As descendants of Esau, the Edomites were related to the Israelites. Yet, they are charged with plundering their kin, rejoicing maliciously in Jerusalem’s fall, and climaxing this by handing survivors over to the enemy. Thus, Edom has sealed its doom.​—Verses 10-16.

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BIBLE TEXTS EXAMINED

○ Obadiah Verse 7​—In Bible times, “eating food” together with someone was virtually a covenant of friendship. How ironic! The Babylonians, “men in covenant” with the Edomites, would prove to be their destroyers. True, the Babylonians of Nebuchadnezzar’s day allowed Edom a share in Judah’s loot after Jerusalem was laid waste. But the later Babylonian king Nabonidus curbed once and for all the commercial and mercantile ambitions of Edom.

○ Verse 10​—Edom was doomed to be “cut off to time indefinite” because of its caustic hatred and callous lack of natural affection for its brother nation, “the sons of Judah.” (Verse 12) Such national extinction meant that an Edomite state with a government and a population at a specific geographical location would disappear off the face of the earth. Today, there is no identifiable people of Edomite nationality; they have “become as though they had never happened to be.”​—Verse 16.