OBADIAH & THE DEADLINESS OF PRIDE
Imagine that a brutal enemy had surrounded your city. One night you manage to escape, and you find yourself out of danger, at least for a moment. Suddenly out of the darkness, an unknown enemy pounces on you and drags you back to the city to be sold into slavery by your original captors. Only in the morning light are you aware that the heartless bounty hunter is your cousin! This is the story of Obadiah. The enemy was Assyria; the victims, the Israelites; and the bounty hunters, the Edomites. Both Edom and Israel were related, being descendants of Jacob.
Between the Gulf of Akaba and the Dead Sea lies a range of precipitous red sandstone heights, known as Mount Seir. Here Esau settled after he had despised his birthright, and his descendants, having driven out the Horites (Gen. 15:. 6), occupied the whole of the mountain (Dent. 2:. 12). The capital city Selah, or Petra, " Rock," was a city unique of its kind amid the works of man. Perched like an eagle’s nest (ver. 4) amid inaccessible mountain fortresses, the dwellings were mostly caves, hewn out of the soft rock (ver. 3, 6), and placed where you could scarce imagine a human foot could climb.
Against these people, the prophecy of the unknown prophet Obadiah, " a worshipper of Jehovah," was directed. To Israel, God had commanded (Deut. 23:7), "Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother." But Edom had shown an implacable hatred to Israel from the time that he refused him a passage through his country on the way from Egypt to Canaan (Num. xx. 14-21) to the day of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans when Edom malignantly cried "Rase it, rase it" (Ps.126:7).
For his pride and cruel hatred, the destruction of Edom was decreed (ver. 3, 4, 10). The people were driven from their rocky home five years after the destruction of Jerusalem, when Nebuchadnezzar, passing down the valley of Arabah, which formed the military road to Egypt, crushed the Edomites. They lost their existence as a nation about a century and a half B.C., and their name perished at the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans. "As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee." (John 5:29)
The story of Esau and Jacob is that of twin brothers, sons of Isaac and Rebekah. They were not identical twins, they were opposites (see Gen. 25:24-34). Esau despised his birthright. The man who had the birthright was in contact with God, he was the priest of his family, he was the man who had a covenant from God, the man who had a relationship with God.
From OTI-31 – Obadiah (961113WE) – https://youtu.be/PW3HCw0OGWA
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