Chronological

¹ In a vision the Lord God showed Obadiah the future of the land of Edom.^[a]

“A report has come from the Lord,” he said, “that God has sent an ambassador to the nations with this message: ‘Attention! You are to send your armies against Edom and destroy her!’”

² “I will cut you down to size among the nations, Edom, making you small and despised.

³ “You are proud because you live in those high, inaccessible cliffs. ‘Who can ever reach us way up here!’ you boast. Don’t fool yourselves! ⁴ Though you soar as high as eagles, and build your nest among the stars, I will bring you plummeting down,” says the Lord.

⁵ “Far better it would be for you if thieves had come at night to plunder you—for they would not take everything! Or if your vineyards were robbed of all their fruit—for at least the gleanings would be left! ⁶ Every nook and cranny will be searched and robbed, and every treasure found and taken.

⁷ “All your allies will turn against you and help to push you out of your land. They will promise peace while plotting your destruction. Your trusted friends will set traps for you, and all your counterstrategy will fail. ⁸ In that day not one wise man will be left in all of Edom!” says the Lord. “For I will fill the wise men of Edom with stupidity. ⁹ The mightiest soldiers of Teman will be confused, and helpless to prevent the slaughter.

¹⁰ “And why? Because of what you did to your brother Israel. Now your sins will be exposed for all to see; ashamed and defenseless, you will be cut off forever. ¹¹ For you deserted Israel in his time of need. You stood aloof, refusing to lift a finger to help him when invaders carried off his wealth and divided Jerusalem among them by lot; you were as one of his enemies.

¹² “You should not have done it. You should not have gloated when they took him far away to foreign lands; you should not have rejoiced in the day of his misfortune; you should not have mocked in his time of need. ¹³ You yourselves went into the land of Israel in the day of his calamity and looted him. You made yourselves rich at his expense. ¹⁴ You stood at the crossroads and killed those trying to escape; you captured the survivors and returned them to their enemies in that terrible time of his distress.

¹⁵ The Lord’s vengeance will soon fall upon all Gentile nations. As you have done to Israel, so will it be done to you. Your acts will boomerang upon your heads. ¹⁶ You drank my cup of punishment upon my holy mountain, and the nations round about will drink it too; yes, they will drink and stagger back and disappear from history, no longer nations anymore.

¹⁷ “But Jerusalem will become a refuge, a way of escape. Israel will reoccupy the land. ¹⁸ Israel will be a fire that sets the dry fields of Edom aflame. There will be no survivors,” for the Lord has spoken.

¹⁹ Then my people who live in the Negeb shall occupy the hill country of Edom; those living in Judean lowlands shall possess the Philistine plains and repossess the fields of Ephraim and Samaria. And the people of Benjamin shall possess Gilead.

²⁰ The Israeli exiles shall return and occupy the Phoenician coastal strip as far north as Zarephath. Those exiled in Asia Minor shall return to their homeland and conquer the Negeb’s outlying villages. ²¹ For deliverers will come to Jerusalem and rule all Edom. And the Lord shall be King!

82 God stands up to open heaven’s court. He pronounces judgment on the judges.^{[a] 2} How long will you judges refuse to listen to the evidence? How long will you shower special favors on the wicked? ³ Give fair judgment to the poor man, the afflicted, the fatherless, the destitute. ⁴ Rescue the poor and helpless from the grasp of evil men. ⁵ But you are so foolish and so ignorant! Because you are in darkness, all the foundations of society^[b] are shaken to the core. ⁶ I have called you all “gods” and “sons of the Most High.” ⁷ But in death you are mere men. You will fall as any prince—for all must die.

⁸ Stand up, O God, and judge the earth. For all of it belongs to you. All nations are in your hands.

83 O God, don’t sit idly by, silent and inactive when we pray. Answer us! Deliver us!

² Don’t you hear the tumult and commotion of your enemies? Don’t you see what they are doing, these proud men who hate the Lord? ³ They are full of craftiness and plot against your people, laying plans to slay your precious ones. ⁴ “Come,” they say, “and let us wipe out Israel as a nation—we will destroy the very memory of her existence.” ⁵ This was their unanimous decision at their summit conference—they signed a treaty to ally themselves against Almighty God— ⁶ these Ishmaelites and Edomites and Moabites and Hagrites; ⁷ people from the lands of Gebal, Ammon, Amalek, Philistia and Tyre; ⁸ Assyria has joined them too, and is allied with the descendants of Lot.^[c]

⁹ Do to them as once you did to Midian, or as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon, ¹⁰ and as you did to your enemies at Endor, whose decaying corpses fertilized the soil. ¹¹ Make their mighty nobles die as Oreb did, and Zeeb;^[d] let all their princes die like Zebah and Zalmunna, ¹² who said, “Let us seize for our own use these pasturelands of God!”

¹³ O my God, blow them away like dust; like chaff before the wind— ¹⁴ as a forest fire that roars across a mountain. ¹⁵ Chase them with your fiery storms, tempests, and tornados. ¹⁶ Utterly disgrace them until they recognize your power and name, O Lord. ¹⁷ Make them failures in everything they do; let them be ashamed and terrified ¹⁸ until they learn that you alone, Jehovah, are the God above all gods in supreme charge of all the earth.