Post by Lee on Nov 30, 2014 18:07:43 GMT
Clips taken from RR exhortation on Obadiah (1988 Berean p193)
Obadiah himself we know very little....
It is brief, but that is no great detriment. Much may be said in few words. It is in its topic that it principally differs. The messages of the prophets as a rule
relate to Israel, and are directed either to the reproof of Israel's wanderings or the delineation of Israel's future. But Obadiah has to do with an alien nation. "Thus said the Lord God CONCERNING EDOM." We all know who Edom was. It was a community descended from Esau, the brother of Jacob, for whom Edom was another name. Though a son of Isaac, he was not beloved of God, but otherwise. "Jacob have I loved; Esau have I hated." Why should one be loved and the other hated? We get the clue in that divine saying: 'I love them that love me." Jacob was a lover of his father's God; Esau was a mere lover of nature.
Obadiah, then, has to deal with the descendants of a man who was not in the covenant of promise, and to whose posterity God had assigned a district to the south-east of the land of promise, consisting of rocky valleys and precipitous places. Concerning this community—active, predatory, zealous, and prosperous, Obadiah speaks. What had he to say? Words of "lamentation and mourning and woe." Destruction and desolation are foreshown for reasons given. "Thou shouldest not have" done this; "thou shouldest not have" done that. Thou shouldest not have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction.
It is written in the prophet Amos concerning Israel. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquity." From this it might seem as if God would have no punishments for any other. But here in Obadiah is a case of punishing for their iniquity a nation whom God did not "know" as He knew Israel.
Moses told Israel (Deut. 9:4) that "for the wickedness of those nations, the Lord doth drive them out before thee—not for thy righteousness or the uprightness of thy heart"
Obadiah himself we know very little....
It is brief, but that is no great detriment. Much may be said in few words. It is in its topic that it principally differs. The messages of the prophets as a rule
relate to Israel, and are directed either to the reproof of Israel's wanderings or the delineation of Israel's future. But Obadiah has to do with an alien nation. "Thus said the Lord God CONCERNING EDOM." We all know who Edom was. It was a community descended from Esau, the brother of Jacob, for whom Edom was another name. Though a son of Isaac, he was not beloved of God, but otherwise. "Jacob have I loved; Esau have I hated." Why should one be loved and the other hated? We get the clue in that divine saying: 'I love them that love me." Jacob was a lover of his father's God; Esau was a mere lover of nature.
Obadiah, then, has to deal with the descendants of a man who was not in the covenant of promise, and to whose posterity God had assigned a district to the south-east of the land of promise, consisting of rocky valleys and precipitous places. Concerning this community—active, predatory, zealous, and prosperous, Obadiah speaks. What had he to say? Words of "lamentation and mourning and woe." Destruction and desolation are foreshown for reasons given. "Thou shouldest not have" done this; "thou shouldest not have" done that. Thou shouldest not have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction.
It is written in the prophet Amos concerning Israel. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquity." From this it might seem as if God would have no punishments for any other. But here in Obadiah is a case of punishing for their iniquity a nation whom God did not "know" as He knew Israel.
Moses told Israel (Deut. 9:4) that "for the wickedness of those nations, the Lord doth drive them out before thee—not for thy righteousness or the uprightness of thy heart"