Obadiah and the 4th of July

Week of Monday, July 1, 2002

At just twenty-one verses, Obadiah is the shortest book in the entire Old Testament; it is also without a doubt one of the most disturbing prophecies. He is never quoted in the New Testament, and although there are about a dozen Obadiahs mentioned in the Old Testament, we know nothing of the person who wrote this prophecy except that most scholars think that he lived in Judah. His name means “servant of Yahweh.”

We normally think of the Scriptures as having been given to God's people, but when you read Obadiah don't overlook a rather remarkable fact: this short prophecy is directed not to Israel or Judah. No, the very first verse tells us that it is to and for one of their bitterest enemies, Edom: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says about Edom.” Obadiah is a good reminder that Yahweh is at work not only in my personal life or your life; He is also at work among the nations and their histories, even among those nations like Edom that are the enemies of His people. But just what that means can sometimes be difficult to understand.

The nation of Edom was located in Mount Seir, with its capital at Petra. It was composed of the descendants of Esau, and if you remember your Old Testament history you remember the bitter rivalry between the twin brothers Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25). That fraternal rivalry endured and festered into an antagonistic, international rivalry for centuries. Obadiah's word for Edom is one of annihilation and extinction: “Let us go against her for battle.” He employs a series of graphic images to portray their destruction. Thieves usually only steal what they can carry, but not this time; they will totally ransack the house of Edom. Normally, grape pickers leave some gleanings, but in this instance the vines will be stripped bare. Israel, says Obadiah, will be like a blazing inferno on the dry stubble of Edom, with the result that Edom will be liquidated: “there will be no survivors from the house of Esau” (verse 18).

Why such catastrophic destruction for Edom? Because of their lofty pride, yes (verse 3), but more importantly “because of the violence done to your brother Jacob” (verse 10). Virtually every reference to Edom in the Old Testament is cast in this negative light. In my devotions this morning, the Psalmist reduces this message of Obadiah to its bare and cruelest minimum:

Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did
       on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
       “tear it down to the foundations!” (Psalm 137:7 )

And as if that religious zeal joined to nationalist fervor was not enough, the Psalmist turns upon another enemy of Israel, Babylon, with some of the most bone-chilling words of Scripture:

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
       happy is he who repays you
       for what you have done to us—
He who seizes your infants
       and dashes them against the rocks. (Psalm 137:8–9)

What are we to make of Obadiah's prophecy that, if we are honest, sounds very much like a message of hatred, retaliation, enmity, and religiously sanctioned violence? “Our God is for us and against you,” says Obadiah; “He will destroy you!”

This is not an isolated problem, either. As I have read through the Old Testament this year I have been shocked once again by the religious cruelty and violence. A large portion of the Old Testament is little more than military and political conquest. In any number of instances we read how, according to the writer of Scripture at least, Yahweh commanded His people to destroy their enemy, annihilate not only their people but everything that had breath, burn the place to the ground, and then for good measure, if you do not carry out this cruelty exactly as commanded, expect God's punishment (see Deut. 2:34, 7:2, 19:16, or Joshua 6:17, 21–24, 11:11, 20). We have an entire vocabulary for such things today. We refer to such acts as genocide, ethnic cleansing, holocaust (literally, “total burning”), and war crimes. It is the vocabulary we use to describe Cambodia, Rwanda, Israel, Palestine, the former Yugoslavia and Armenia.

A two-page essay cannot begin to solve this disturbing problem, but my own mind moves in several directions. It might be that in the history of warfare and atrocities peoples and nations get what they deserve, in the sense that they reap what they sow. Yahweh simply gives them up to the consequences of their own choices. He gives them what they want (see Romans 1:24, 26, 28)—hatred, blood lust, retaliation, death and destruction. When you listen to the rhetoric of some nations today, this is easy to believe. The writer, then, describes this to us as divinely sanctioned (remember we saw last week in the census of David how the same action was described from different perspectives). Notice too that the destruction of God's own people at the hands of Assyria (722 BC) and Babylon (586 BC), and not just the destruction of His enemies, is described in the Old Testament in very similar ways: Israel fell to divine judgment due to its own actions, just like Edom in Obadiah. The ground is level for all nations when it comes to self-destructive hatreds.

If the prophecy of Obadiah is all that we knew or learned in Scripture, that would be different. But Obadiah is only a small portion of the story and it is told by a prophet limited by his own time and culture. The drama of redemption finds fullest expression in Jesus Christ. Yes, God spoke through prophets like Obadiah in different times and ways, “but in these last days He has spoken to us in His Son” (Hebrews 1:1). All the rest of Scripture must be understood in the light of this most decisive Word. We understand the less clear parts of Scripture like Obadiah's prophecy from the perspective of the more clear aspects like what we know about the life, death, resurrection and teachings of Jesus.

One of the more clear teachings of the Bible, and not one found only in the New Testament, is God's love for all the nations. When He first elected a people to Himself, in fact, he promised Abraham that in him “all the peoples of the earth would be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Remarkably, even in Obadiah's brief prophecy he refers to Yaweh's engagement with “all the nations” (verse 15). When we get to the New Testament the early Christians, all Jewish at first, struggled mightily to move beyond ethnocentrism and nationalism, to learn that God “does not show favoritism but accepts people from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (Acts 10:34–35). John's image of heaven, likewise, is comprised of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Revelation 7:9). That includes Edom. So it would be wrong to think of Yahweh as some narrow, tribal and nationalistic god. Next week, in fact, we will see His deep love for another enemy of Israel, Nineveh, and how He rebuked Jonah who was angry when He was gracious to them.

Finally, Obadiah provides a stern reminder about how easy and dangerous it is to wrap the Gospel in the flag, to imagine that somehow the Lord of all the nations loves my nation more (or most). Flying the American flag in a sanctuary intimates as much, and if you don't think so just ask yourself why you take offense at Iraqis who claim Allah is for their cause. Patriotism and gratitude on the Fourth of July are virtues; co-opting Yahweh for our own narrow and nationalistic interests is not.

The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.