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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: NUM-ORC |
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OBADIAH , the name prefixed to the fourth of the Old Testament " minor prophets," meaning " Servant " or " worshipper " of Yahweh; of a type common in Semitic proper names; cf.the Arabic `Abdallah, Taimallat, `Abd Manat, &c., the Hebrew Abdiel and Obed Edom, and many Phoenician forms, " The vision of Obadiah " bears no date, or other historical note, nor can we connect Obadiah the prophet with any other Obadiah of the Old Testament,) and our only clue to the date and composition of the book lies in internal evidence. The prophecy is directed against Edom. Yahweh has sent a messenger forth among the nations to stir them up to battle against the proud inhabitants of Mount
Israel shall dwell in Mount
house
The most obvious evidence of date lies in the cause assigned for the judgment on Edom (vers. 10-14). The calamity of Jerusalem can only be the sack of the city by Nebuchadrezzar (586 B.C.); the malevolence and cruelty of Edom on this occasion are characterized in similar terms by several writers of the exile or subsequent periods, but by none with the same circumstance and vividness of detail as here (Ezek. xxv. 8, 12 f., xxxv
The critical problem is, however, complicated by certain phenomena of literary relationship? Obad. 1-6, 8 agree so closely and in part verbally with Jer. xlix. 14-16, 9, 1o, 7 that the two passages cannot be independent; nor does it seem possible that Obadiah quotes from Jeremiah, for Obad. 1-8 is a well-connected whole, while the parallel verses in Jeremiah appear in different order, interspersed with other matter, and in a much less lucid connexion. In Jeremiah the picture is vague, and Edom's unwisdom (ver. 7) stands without proof. In Obadiah the conception is quite definite. Edom is attacked by his own allies, and his folly appears in that he exposes himself to such treachery. Again, the probability that the passage in Jeremiah incorporates disjointed fragments of an older oracle is greatly increased by the fact that the prophecy against Moab in the preceding chapter uses, in the same way, Isa. xv., xvi., and the prophecy of Balaam. Scholars who assign the passage in Jeremiah to 604 B.C. (e.g. Driver, L.O.T. chap. vi. 4), explain this relationship by assuming with Ewald (Propheten, i. 489 f.), Graf (Jeremia, p. 558 f.), Robertson Smith and others, that Jeremiah and our book of Obadiah alike quote from an older oracle. Others, however, who do not regard Jer. xlix. as Jeremianic, explain the relationship as one of dependence on Obadiah. This explanation, simpler in itself, is not discredited by the fact that in some details (cf. Obad. 2 and jer. xlix. 15) the text t An early Hebrew tradition recorded by Jerome (Comm. in Ob.) identified the prophet with the best-known Obadiah of the historical books, the protector of the prophets in the reign of Ahab (1 Kings xviii.). 2 Between Joel and Obadiah there are points of material and verbal agreement so close as to imply that Joel used the earlier book (Joel iii. 19Ob. 10, 14; Joel iii.3Ob. 11 ; Joel ii. 32, iii. 70b. 17). of the dependent passage may be preferable to that of the original
chief
The remainder of the book, vers. (15) 16-21, must belong to a later date. That the book of Obadiah, short as it is, is a complex document might have been suspected from an apparent change of view between vers. 1-7 and vers. 15 f. In the former verses Esau is destroyed by his allies, and they occupy his territory, but in the latter he perishes with the other heathen in the day of universal retribution, he disappears before the victorious advance of Israel , and the southern Judaeans occupy his land.2 The ideas of this passage belong to the eschatological outlook of later centuries, but afford no data for chronology. The conceptions of the " rescued ones " (R.V. " those that escape," V.. 17), of the sanctity of Zion, of the kingship of Yahweh, are the common property of the post-exilic writers. The restoration of the old borders of Israel and the conquest of Edom and the Philistines are ideas as old as Amos ix., Isa. xi. 14; but such passages represent this conquest as a suzerainty of Israel over its neighbours, as in the days of David, while in Obadiah, as in other later books, the intensified antithesisreligious as well as politicalbetween Judah and the surrounding heathen finds its expression in the idea of a consuming judgment on the latter the great " day of Yahweh." The chief
interest
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