The Expositor's Bible: The Book of the Twelve Prophets,...

[447]אָנוּחַ. LXX. ἀναπαύσομαι, I will rest. A.V.: that I might rest in the day of trouble. Others: I will wait for. Wellhausen suggests אִנָּחֵם (Isa. l. 24), I will take comfort. Sinker takes אשר as the simple relative: I who will wait patiently for the day of doom. Von Orelli takes it as the conjunction because.

[454]עֹבַדְיָה, ‘Obadyah, the later form of עֹבַדְיָהוּ, ‘Obadyahu (a name occurring thrice before the Exile: Ahab’s steward who hid the prophets of the Lord, 1 Kings xviii. 3–7, 16; of a man in David’s house, 1 Chron. xxvii. 19; a Levite in Josiah’s reign, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 12), is the name of several of the Jews who returned from exile: Ezra viii. 9, the son of Jehi’el (in 1 Esdras viii. Ἀβαδιας); Neh. x. 6, a priest, probably the same as the Obadiah in xii. 25, a porter, and the עַבְדָּא, the singer, in xi. 17, who is called עֹבַדְיָה in 1 Chron. ix. 16. Another ‘Obadyah is given in the eleventh generation from Saul, 1 Chron. viii. 38, ix. 44; another in the royal line in the time of the Exile, iii. 21; a man of Issachar, vii. 3; a Gadite under David, xii. 9; a prince under Jehoshaphat sent to teach in the cities of Judah, 2 Chron. xvii. 7. With the Massoretic points עֹבַדְיָה means worshipper of Jehovah: cf. Obed-Edom, and so in the Greek form, Ὀβδειου, of Cod. B. But other Codd., A, θ and א, give Ἀβδιου or Ἀβδειου, and this, with the alternative Hebrew form אַבְדָּא of Neh. xi. 17, suggests rather עֶבֶד יָה, servant of Jehovah. The name as given in the title is probably intended to be that of an historical individual, as in the titles of all the other books; but which, or if any, of the above mentioned it is impossible to say. Note, however, that it is the later post-exilic form of the name that is used, in spite of the book occurring among the pre-exilic prophets. Some, less probably, take the name Obadyah to be symbolic of the prophetic character of the writer.

[458] Caspari (Der Proph. Ob. ausgelegt 1842), Ewald, Graf, Pusey, Driver, Giesebrecht, Wildeboer and König. Cf. Jer. xlix. 9 with Ob. 5; Jer. xlix. 14 ff. with Ob. 1–4. The opening of Ob. 1 ff. is held to be more in its place than where it occurs in the middle of Jeremiah’s passage. The language of Obadiah is “terser and more forcible. Jeremiah seems to expand Obadiah, and parts of Jeremiah which have no parallel in Obadiah are like Obadiah’s own style” (Driver). This strong argument is enforced in detail by Pusey: “Out of the sixteen verses of which the prophecy of Jeremiah against Edom consists, four are identical with those of Obadiah; a fifth embodies a verse of Obadiah’s; of the eleven which remain ten have some turns of expression or idioms, more or fewer, which occur in Jeremiah, either in these prophecies against foreign nations, or in his prophecies generally. Now it would be wholly improbable that a prophet, selecting verses out of the prophecy of Jeremiah, should have selected precisely those which contain none of Jeremiah’s characteristic expressions; whereas it perfectly fits in with the supposition that Jeremiah interwove verses of Obadiah with his own prophecy, that in verses so interwoven there is not one expression which occurs elsewhere in Jeremiah.” Similarly Nowack, Comm., 1897.

[461] So Delitzsch, Keil, Volck in Herzog’s Real. Ency. II., Orelli and Kirkpatrick. Delitzsch indeed suggests that the prophet may have been Obadiah the prince appointed by Jehoshaphat to teach in the cities of Judah. See above, p. 163, n. 454.

[466] “That the verses Obadiah 10 ff. refer to this event [the sack of Jerusalem] will always remain the most natural supposition, for the description which they give so completely suits that time that it is not possible to take any other explanation into consideration.”

[478] It can hardly be supposed that Edom’s treacherous allies were Assyrians or Babylonians, for even if the phrase “men of thy covenant” could be applied to those to whom Edom was tributary, the Assyrian or Babylonian method of dealing with conquered peoples is described by saying that they took them off into captivity, not that they sent them to the border.

[482] Calvin, while refusing in his introduction to Obadiah to fix a date (except in so far as he thinks it impossible for the book to be earlier than Isaiah), implies throughout his commentary on the book that it was addressed to Edom while the Jews were in exile. See his remarks on vv. 18–20.

[484] This is no doubt from the later writer, who before he gives the new word of Jehovah with regard to Edom, quotes the earlier prophecy, marked above by quotation marks. In no other way can we explain the immediate following of the words “Thus hath the Lord spoken” with “We have heard a report,” etc.