Who Is Obadiah?

I felt compelled to bust open my ESV, and I first turned upon Habbakuk. Now, I didn’t feel like reading that, mainly because I’ve been radnomly turning to that 9 out of 10 times each time I open my ESV, so I turned back…and I came across Obadiah…

The first thing I noticed about Obadiah that caught my attention was the length of the book: it is only 21 verses long! Now, I’ve read that there are actually shorter books than this…but I don’t know them.

As I was reading, I began to question and wonder how this Obadiah was significant (of course, everyone is significant and important in God’s eyes). The book of Obadiah is a prophecy against the city[?] of Edom, which has turned against Israel. Of course, reading all of this didn’t make too much sense to me, and the question lingered in my mind of Who IS Obadiah?. I slept a bit on it…and then I woke up with a sudden jolt and decide to check The Living Bible (which is the predecessor for the NLT.

According to TLB, Obadiah was written around 6th Century BC (this WAS in the Old Testament, by the way), and exemplified how God wouldn’t stand idle while brothers destroyed each other. Here’s the back-story: Israel descended from Jacob, and Edom was from Esau. Jacob and Esau are brothers, yet Edom/Esau has taken to arms against Israel/Jacob with their enemies. TLB explains that this passage was significant in showing that God wouldn’t stand aside and allow brothers (Jacob&Esau/Israel&Edom) to fight against each other, and would punish the violator.

After reading this, I decided to go back to sleep…and the thought of Haste The Day’s Minor Prophets came into my mind — not only is it a great song, but I think if I dig deeper, I’ll find even more answers towards Obadiah. Of course, I told my dad about this little adventure, and he dug up a PDF from…someone.

You can read it here, courtesy of Sonic Light.

Take each other’s hands, look into the clouds…
Such a beautiful song we sing.
Finally finding our own way back home,
what a beautiful song we sing.

Haste The Day – Minor Prophets