Jeremiah's pro] I
not appear to barmonixe with this result, inasmuch ai the cause of the judgment with which th E I mites are thn charged not only with looking upon the ther nation with contemptnou bal with taJ themselves in the plundering of Judah, and mordering the fugitives, or giving them up to their I by 1. nations; but whether it i^ the destru f Jerusalem by the Chal no means so certain as many commentators imagine. It is true that Caspari observes (p. 18), that u every one who reads these verses would naturally suppose that they refer to that catastrophe, and to the hostilities shown by the Edomites to the.' that occasion, to which those prophets wdio lived after the destruction of Jerum, viz. Jeremiah (Lam. iv. 21, 22), Ezekiel (ch. XXXV.), and the author of Ps. exxxvii., refer to some extent in almost the same words in which Obadiah speaks of them." I>ut of the passages cited, Lam. iv. 21, 22 cannot be taken into account at all, since it simply contains the thought that the cup (of affliction) will also reach to the daughter of Edom; and that she will be intoxicated and stripped, and that Jehovah will punish her guilt. The other two are no doubt similar. The Psalmist in Ps. exxxvii. utters this prayer in ver. 7: " Remember, Jehovah, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, who say, Strip, strip {i.e. demolish) even to the foundation thereof;" and Ezekiel threatens Edom with everlasting desolation, because
; for the fact thai J I be in the stamp of originality in a greater degree than any other prophet, and the circumstance torical allusions which it contains can thereby be satisfactorily explained; whereas the other attempts at solving the difheui" when we look at the thing more closely, prove to he either altogether untenable, or such as will not apply throughout.
Thus, for example, Ewald and Graf (on Jer. xlix. 7 sqq.) have endeavoured to reconcile the fact that Jeremiah had read the first part of Obadiah as early as the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and had made use of it in his prophecy, with the opinion that vers. 10-16 (Ob.) refer to the Chaldean conquest and destruction of Jerusalem, by the hypothesis that the first part miah lias made use of. liah in his prophecy by the assumption that ( >'. liah is not di in<» something that lias already happened, but giving a prophetic picture of the future, is wrecked on the wording of the verses in question.
unt of its wickedness towards its brother Jacob (ver. 10), and then describes this wickedness in preterites — u On the day of thy standing opposite when strangers had come into his gates and cast the lot upon Jerusalem" (ver. 11); and, "As ye have
I ICt,
same time, it cannot have been at ■ later period: I. on the one hand, it produces the unquestionable impression, that the hostilities practised by the Edomite* were still kept in the most lively remembrance; and on the other hand, it contains no hint of that idolatrous worship to which the ruthless Athaliah endeavoured to give the pre-eminence in Judah, after the one year's reign of Ahaziah, who succeeded Joram. For the commentaries on Obadiah, see mv Lehrbuch tier EinUitung, §88.
i force, it we take ie, just as it reads, viz. as a declaration of the already tal the Lord for carrying out the resolution which had been heard of by report In t. he 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 shulldch with garnets in the pause, which is changed by Jeremiah into the less appropriate passive participle kal, corresponds to WDB^ and expresses in prophetic form the certainty of the accomplishment of the
Ver.
onlvthroogfa an incorrect interpretation of the liistorical pre.crnt that Hit/:. Id possibly b ^rJ the participle as
Ver. 3 contains a consequence wdiich follows from ver. 2. Edom will be unable to avert tin its lofty rocky castles will n •
Lord) and which lie will carry out through the medium of the nations. Bdom haa therefore I een deceived by its proud reliance upon these rocky t,—". with the connecting sound s
~"\ which is not used in Hebrew (like WE from RVIJ), and is found not only hero and in tl ralld j i of Jeremiah, but also in the Song of Sol. ii. 11, where it occurs in parallelism with "inp, which points to the meaning refugittm, i.r. asylum.
expression taB* DhD the 2 is to be considered as still retaining its force from *Un onwards (cf. lsa. xxviii. 7;.Job xv..",,
Is rests upon high: and hence the abstract noun mdrOm, height, instead of the adjective. The Edomitee inhabited the mountains of & V. which have not yet been carefully explored in detail. They are on the eastern side of the Ghor (or Arabah), stretching from the deep rocky valley of the Ahsy, which opens into the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, and extending as far as uiEla on the Red Sea, and consist of mighty rocks of granite and porphyry, covered with di vegetation, which terminate in the west, towards the deeply intersected sand-sea of the Ghor and Arabah, in steep and lofty walls of sandstone. The mountains are hardly accessible, therefore, on the western side; whereas on the east they
1 The renderings adopted on the authority of the ancient versions, such as clefts of the rock, scissurse, jagged rocks, fissures (oVa/, LXX.), caves, which are derived either from the supposed connection between run and antrum (with the letters transposed), have far less to sustain them. For the meanings assigned to these Arabic words are not the primary meanings, but derivative ones. The former signifies literally propulit, the latter henee its ear!:- ■: inhabitant w« r II r:! -. i.e. dwellen in caves; and even extc
iumasans, from Eleutheropolia to Petra Hal.k '.it is a posacssrion of Emu), there are small dwellings in cares;
and on ace great heat sun, since it is a * pro-
rranean huts are used."
injury inflicted bj thieves or robbers, hut chiefly 1 • the explanation, the thought that thiei Bji being quite thou deal lM must rather be taken as pointing far beyond the contents of v. •. 5 IB I •'■ D more fully explained in
'.'. in I ii thereby pi ■ a thought thrown in parenthetically) with which the prophet anticipates the principal fact in his livel. in the form of an I -xclamation of SmniO their sufficiency (see Delitssch "ii Isa. xl. 16); that is to say, as much as they need, or can use, or find lying open before them. The picture of the grape-gatherers says the same thing. They also do not take away all, even to the very last, but leave some gleanings behind, not only if they fear God, according to Lev. xix. 10, Dcut. xxiv. 21, as Hitzig supposes, but even if they do not trouble themselves about God's commandments at all, because many a bunch escapes their notice which is only discovered on careful gleaning. Edom, on the contrary, is completely cleared out. In ver. 6 the address to Edom passes o comparison at the enemy to thiercs and grape-gathcrcra, and:;: » -*•• aneaaj aa beiaf; ti^aaateh i epapfr-fatkaien who lean r. > gleaning, and thieres who waste till they ha Ye enough; and ther.-. laaal lj * a^kaaaag tiat peetkal picture.
expression m'cOrdh kdreshetk in Piuv. i. 17 (Hitzig), or from the Syriac dit (Ges. Addid. ad this. p. 96). The only meaning that can be sustained is abscess or wound. We must therefore adhere to the rendering, " they make thy bread a wound under thee." For the proposal to take lachm'Mui (thy bread) as a second genitive dependent upon \inshe (the men;, is not only opposed to the accents and the parallelism of the members, according to which 'anshc sh'lomckhd (the men of thy peace) must conclude the second clause, just as 'anshe b'rlthekhd (the men of thy covenant) closes the first: but it is altogether
L 12), Eliphaz
this upon Eilom with the in: khii and) that all the Edomites should be cut off. Mtqqdtelj from the murdering, by murder (compare Gen. ix. 11, where min occurs after yikkdt&h in this sense); not M without confli- Ewald renders it, for qetel signifies slaying and not conflict. The thought of connecting miqq&Ul with what follows cannot for a moment be entertained (vid. LXX., Syr., Yulg.). It is opposed not only by the authority of the Masoretic punctuation, but still more decisively by the fact, that the stronger and more special word (qetel) cannot precede the weaker and more gene- form a climax: first, the carrying away of Judah's possessi that is to robably those of the open country; then the lingl both in and with the capital. JHfa W (per/, kal of TT— ITIJ, not piel for W\ because the Yod praf. of the imperfect pit! is never dropped in verbs SD), to cast the lot upon booty (things) and prisoners, to divide them among them (compare Joel iii. 3 and Xah. iii. 10). Caspari, Hitzig, and others understand it here as in Joel iii. 3, as denoting the distribution of the captive inhabitants of Jerusalem, and found upon this one of their leading arguments, that the description given here
■p.ct.ng dm* Ii:-:—. If the Ubng and plundering of Jerusalem weft an accomplished fact, whether in idea «>r in reality, at it is shown to be by the perfect) W3 and WJ in v. r. 11, Obadiah could not in that QM8 warn the KdoraitCI i. Etosenmiiller, and others, lake the verbs in fen, 18* l i 'utura of the -Thou ihonldest nofl hare seen,ahou]
untenable, namely, that y(tm in ver. 11 denotes the day of the •are of Jernaaleai, and in vers. 1l\ 18 the period after this day-. the identity of T]9? ^,tn,> d tn.v once. The waning in » 19 11 it only Intelligible on tinsupposition, that Obadiah has not any particular conq
«>ne or one that has already ocrurred, hut this as an event that not only hat air iken place, hut will t:il.
and that, starting from this, lie sees in the existing case all sequent cases of a simil From this ideal standpoint lie could warn Edom of what it had already done, and designate the disastrous day which had come upon Judah and Jerusalem by different expressions as a day of the greatest calamity; for what Edom had done, and what had befallen Judah, were ty'pes of the future development of the fate of Judah and of the attitude of Edom towards it, which go on fulfilling themselves more and more until the day of the Lord upon all nations, upon the near approach of which Obadiah founds his warning in ver. 15. The warning proceeds in vers. 12-14 from the general to the particular, or from the lower to the higher. Obadiah warns the Edomites, as Hitzig says, " not to rejoice in Judah's troubles (ver. 12), nor to make common cause with the conquerors (ver. 13), nor to outdo and complete the work of the enemy (ver. 14)." By the cop. Vav, which stands at the head of all the three clauses in ver. 12, the wTarning addressed to the Edomites, against such conduct as this, is linked on to what they had already done. The three clauses of ver. 12 contain a warning in a graduated form against malicious pleasure. n«"j as toe hausco would therefore alter the text, and read is not absolute! v necsjmary. since it is omitted in t nmnch as the eelection of the tunc of a I as that in which to rage against him - and the warning proceeds to the worst crime of nil, their
1 tho Judaan fugitives, for the purjiosc of mu or d j g then \. tie en« Pertq signifies here th« lately with the tame meaning: not " to npprehci power that then* if no etca; too little after the prect
This warning ported in vcr. 15 by an i of the day of the Lord, »m and all the enci
:ied by Obadiah, n< Isaiah, and the prophets that follow, adopted it from 01 The primary meaning is not the day of judgment, but the on which J reveals His majesty and omnipotence in a glorious mam overthrow all ungodly power?, and to complete His I n. It was this which ga. to the idea of the day of judgment and retribution which predominates in the prophetic announcements, but which simply forms one side of the revelation of the glory of God, as our passage at once shows;
caroosali which tb MoanSlei bsid upon Zioo, hk.- v« >. - m hdthay in the apodosis, of th. I*a. IL 11 irasion u they shall be as though I been"
swallowing Prow xxiii. 2), i.e. drinking in full draughts; and the effect,^ u they will be like such as have not been, ha\ existed" (cf. Job x. 10), i.e. they will be utterly destroyed M
Vers. 17-21. Tin: Kingdom of Jeuovah established upon Zion. — The prophecy advances from the judgment upon
M very clearly seen to be a m lanation of the H in ver. 176. In ver. 17 Obadiah gives, in a few brief words, the sum and substance of the salvation which awaits the people of the Lord in the future. This salvation is unfolded still further in what follows, and first of all in vers. 18, 19, by a fuller exposition of the thought expressed in ver. 176.