Table of Contents
Obadiah
Obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament — twenty-one verses, one chapter, no date given, almost nothing said about the prophet himself — and every one of those verses is aimed at a single target: Edom, the nation descended from Esau, Jacob’s own twin brother. When Jerusalem fell, Edom did not lift a hand against her. Worse, Edom stood at the crossroads and watched, gloated, and helped loot what was left.
The charge Obadiah brings is not idolatry or ritual corruption, the usual complaint against Israel’s own kings and priests. It is betrayal of family in the hour a brother most needed one — a sin measured not by ceremonial law but by the oldest obligation there is. The verdict God renders on it becomes, in the book’s own final lines, a principle wider than Edom alone: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee. This series reads the whole book in a single study.
