Obadiah

Contemporary English Version

Edom's Pride and Punishment

¹^(A) The Lord God gave Obadiah
a message^[a] about Edom,
    and this is what we heard:
“I, the Lord, have sent
    a messenger
with orders for the nations
    to attack Edom.”

²The Lord said to Edom:
I will make you the weakest
    and most despised nation.
³You live in a mountain fortress,^[b]
    because your pride
makes you feel safe from attack,
    but you are mistaken.
⁴I will still bring you down,
even if you fly higher
    than an eagle
or nest among the stars.
    I, the Lord, have spoken!

⁵If thieves break in at night,
they steal
    only what they want.
And people who harvest grapes
    always leave some unpicked.
But, Edom, you are doomed!
⁶Everything you treasure most
    will be taken from you.
⁷Your allies can't be trusted.
They will force you out
    of your own country.
And your best friends
will trick and trap you,
    even before you know it.

⁸Edom, when this happens,
I, the Lord, will destroy
    all your marvelous wisdom.
⁹Warriors from the city of Teman^[c]
    will be terrified,
and you descendants of Esau^[d]
    will be wiped out.

The Lord Condemns Edom's Cruelty

¹⁰You were cruel to your relatives,
    the descendants of Jacob.^[e]
Now you will be destroyed,
    disgraced forever.
¹¹You stood there and watched
as foreigners entered Jerusalem
    and took what they wanted.
In fact, you were no better
    than those foreigners.

¹²Why did you celebrate
when such a dreadful disaster
    struck your relatives?
Why were you so pleased
when everyone in Judah
    was suffering?
¹³They are my people,
    and you were cruel to them.
You went through their towns,
sneering and stealing
    whatever was left.
¹⁴In their time of torment,
    you ambushed refugees
and handed them over
    to their attackers.

The Lord Will Judge the Nations

¹⁵The day is coming
when I, the Lord,
will judge the nations.
And, Edom, you will pay in full
for what you have done.

¹⁶I forced the people of Judah^[f]
to drink the wine of my anger
on my sacred mountain.
Soon the neighboring nations
must drink their fill—
then vanish without a trace.

Victory for Israel

¹⁷The Lord's people who escape
will go to Mount Zion,
    and it will be holy.
Then Jacob's descendants
will capture the land of those
    who took their land.
¹⁸Israel^[g] will be a fire,
and Edom will be straw
    going up in flames.
The Lord has spoken!

¹⁹The people of Israel
who live in the Southern Desert
    will take the land of Edom.
Those who live in the hills
will capture Philistia,
    Ephraim, and Samaria.
And the tribe of Benjamin
    will conquer Gilead.

²⁰Those who return from captivity
will control Phoenicia
    as far as Zarephath.^[h]
Captives from Jerusalem
    who were taken to Sepharad^[i]
will capture the towns
    of the Southern Desert.
²¹Those the Lord has saved
will live on Mount Zion
    and rule over Edom.^[j]
Then the kingdom will belong
    to the Lord.

Footnotes

1 message: Or “vision.”
3 mountain fortress: The Hebrew text has “rocky cliff,” which sounds like “Sela,” the capital of Edom, a fortress city built on a mountain.
9 Teman: A famous city in Edom.
9 descendants of Esau: The people of Edom were descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob (Israel).
10 descendants of Jacob: Jacob and Esau were brothers (see the note on Esau at verse 9).
16 I forced … Judah: Or “I will force the people of Edom.”
18 Israel: Hebrew “The descendants of Jacob and of Joseph.”
20 Those who return … Zarephath: One possible meaning for the difficult Hebrew text.
20 Sepharad: Possibly the city of Sardis, the capital of Lydia, a country north and west of Media. This would refer to those captives from Judah who had been taken beyond the kingdom of Babylonia.
21 Those the Lord … Edom: Or “Leaders on (from) Mount Zion will save the people and rule over Edom.”

Jonah 1-4

Contemporary English Version

Jonah Runs from the Lord

1 ^(A) One day the Lord told Jonah, the son of Amittai, ²to go to the great city of Nineveh^[a] and say to the people, “The Lord has seen your terrible sins. You are doomed!”

³Instead, Jonah ran from the Lord. He went to the seaport of Joppa and found a ship that was going to Spain. So he paid his fare, then got on the ship and sailed away to escape.

⁴But the Lord made a strong wind blow, and such a bad storm came up that the ship was about to be broken to pieces. ⁵The sailors were frightened, and they all started praying to their gods. They even threw the ship's cargo overboard to make the ship lighter.

All this time, Jonah was down below deck, sound asleep. ⁶The ship's captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep at a time like this? Get up and pray to your God! Maybe he will have pity on us and keep us from drowning.”

⁷Finally, the sailors got together and said, “Let's ask our gods to show us^[b] who caused all this trouble.” It turned out to be Jonah.

⁸They started asking him, “Are you the one who brought all this trouble on us? What business are you in? Where do you come from? What is your country? Who are your people?”

⁹Jonah answered, “I'm a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

¹⁰When the sailors heard this, they were frightened, because Jonah had already told them he was running from the Lord. Then they said, “Do you know what you have done?”

¹¹The storm kept getting worse, until finally the sailors asked him, “What should we do with you to make the sea calm down?”

¹²Jonah told them, “Throw me into the sea, and it will calm down. I'm the cause of this terrible storm.”

¹³The sailors tried their best to row to the shore. But they could not do it, and the storm kept getting worse every minute. ¹⁴So they prayed to the Lord, “Please don't let us drown for taking this man's life. Don't hold us guilty for killing an innocent man. All of this happened because you wanted it to.” ¹⁵Then they threw Jonah overboard, and the sea calmed down. ¹⁶The sailors were so terrified that they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made all kinds of promises.

¹⁷^(B) The Lord sent a big fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights.

Jonah's Prayer

2 From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God:

²When I was in trouble, Lord,
I prayed to you,
    and you listened to me.
From deep in the world
    of the dead,
I begged for your help,
    and you answered my prayer.

³You threw me down
    to the bottom of the sea.
The water was churning
    all around;
I was completely covered
    by your mighty waves.
⁴I thought I was swept away
    from your sight,
never again to see
    your holy temple.

⁵I was almost drowned
by the swirling waters
    that surrounded me.
Seaweed had wrapped
    around my head.
⁶I had sunk down deep
    below the mountains
    beneath the sea.
I knew that forever,
    I would be a prisoner there.

But, you, Lord God,
    rescued me from that pit.
⁷When my life was slipping away,
    I remembered you—
and in your holy temple
    you heard my prayer.

⁸All who worship worthless idols
turn from the God
    who offers them mercy.
⁹But with shouts of praise,
I will offer a sacrifice
    to you, my Lord.
I will keep my promise,
because you are the one
    with power to save.

¹⁰^(C) The Lord commanded the fish to vomit up Jonah on the shore. And it did.

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

3 Once again the Lord told Jonah ²to go to that great city of Nineveh and preach his message of doom.

³Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to Nineveh. The city was so big that it took three days just to walk through it. ⁴^(D) After walking for a day, Jonah warned the people, “Forty days from now, Nineveh will be destroyed!”

⁵They believed God's message and set a time when they would go without eating to show their sorrow. Then everyone in the city, no matter who they were, dressed in sackcloth.

⁶When the king of Nineveh heard what was happening, he also dressed in sackcloth; he left the royal palace and sat in dust.^[c] ^7-9Then he and his officials sent out an order for everyone in the city to obey. It said:

None of you or your animals may eat or drink a thing. Each of you must wear sackcloth, and you must even put sackcloth on your animals.

You must also pray to the Lord God with all your heart and stop being sinful and cruel. Maybe God will change his mind and have mercy on us, so we won't be destroyed.

¹⁰When God saw that the people had stopped doing evil things, he had pity and did not destroy them as he had planned.

Jonah Gets Angry with the Lord

4 Jonah was really upset and angry. ²^(E) So he prayed:

Our Lord, I knew from the very beginning that you wouldn't destroy Nineveh. That's why I left my own country and headed for Spain. You are a kind and merciful God, and you are very patient. You always show love, and you don't like to punish anyone.

³^(F) Now let me die! I'd be better off dead.

⁴The Lord replied, “What right do you have to be angry?”

⁵Jonah then left through the east gate of the city and made a shelter to protect himself from the sun. He sat under the shelter, waiting to see what would happen to Nineveh.

⁶The Lord made a vine grow up to shade Jonah's head and protect him from the sun. Jonah was very happy to have the vine, ⁷but early the next morning the Lord sent a worm to chew on the vine, and the vine dried up. ⁸During the day the Lord sent a scorching wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head, making him feel faint. Jonah was ready to die, and he shouted, “I wish I were dead!”

⁹But the Lord asked, “Jonah, do you have the right to be angry about the vine?”

“Yes, I do,” he answered, “and I'm angry enough to die.”

¹⁰But the Lord said:

You are concerned about a vine that you did not plant or take care of, a vine that grew up in one night and died the next. ¹¹In that city of Nineveh there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell right from wrong, and many cattle are also there. Don't you think I should be concerned about that big city?

Footnotes

1.2 Nineveh: Capital city of Assyria, a hated enemy of Israel.
1.7 ask … show us: The Hebrew text has “cast lots,” which were pieces of wood or stone used to find out how and when to do something. In this case, the lots would show who was the guilty person.
3.5,6 dressed in sackcloth … sat in dust: Sackcloth was a rough, dark-colored cloth made from goat or camel hair and used to make grain sacks. Sometimes people wore sackcloth and sat in dust to show how sorry they were for their sins.