Obadiah 1
Oba 1:1 . The vision of Obadiah. This is reckoned a higher mode of revelation than that of dreams. The Chaldaic paraphrase reads, “The prophecy of Obadiah.”
Concerning Edom. He joins his voice to his contemporary prophets against this country, as may be seen in Isa 21:11 . Amo 1:11 . Joe 1:19 .
Oba 1:3 . The pride of thy heart hath deceived thee. Dwelling in mount Seir, and having abundance of rocks for fortresses, Edom boasted of exemption from the sword, and of her splendid palaces.
Oba 1:5 . If thieves came by night, to thy house, or to thy vintage, they would have stolen only till they had enough, and left all the rest behind. But, oh Edom, the Chaldeans will leave nothing whatever. The mountains of Idumea were favourable to the culture of the vine.
Oba 1:9 . Thy mighty men, oh Teman, shall be dismayed. Duke Teman was grandson of Esau. Gen 36:15 . Teman was also the name of the capital, which too much confided in its strength. The jews, it is not doubted, had oppressed them; but when Jerusalem fell under the invader, the Edomites indulged in indecent exultations. They even sent an army of mighty men to join the Chaldeans, and to slaughter the fugitive jews: a most unbrotherly part towards Jacob. Nothing is more strongly marked as an object of divine displeasure than the sin of cruelty or unkindness towards brethren, and in this instance an awful retaliation was denounced. Psa 137:7-9 .
Oba 1:15 . The day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen. The Chaldean army presently reached Idumea, and carried Teman into captivity. Whatever mercy or forbearance the western nations of Syria might receive, the wars, the successive wars, between the kings of Egypt and of Syria, as described in the eleventh chapter of Daniel, made them the most unhappy of nations. The Lord visited the blood of guilty fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation. The race of Edom was cut off, as in Oba 1:18 , till none remained.
Oba 1:17 . Upon mount Zion shall be deliverance. The christian church is his holy hill, the throne of the glory of Christ. Zion and the temple shall be restored, but Teman shall be destroyed.
Oba 1:21 . The kingdom shall be the Lord’s, when the jews may yet in part be restored to their own land, if they, as Paul says, abide not still in unbelief. The Hebrew prophets ever left some encouragement to the remnant, a hope in their end, when all the glory of the latter day shall break forth upon the church; when the sun of Zion shall no more go down, nor her moon wane.
REFLECTIONS.
Boundless was the joy of Edom when Jerusalem fell; for they then hoped to rise and reign. But as Josephus states, in four years the Chaldeans dashed in pieces all the nations of the west. Then the pride of Edom had a final fall. It is rash to rejoice at our neighbour’s calamities, for we know not what is suspended over our own heads.
The sins of men and of nations in the very striking characters of retributive justice, display the righteousness of God in the identity of his visitations. Not an act that Edom did against Israel and Judah, but it was requited on the head of Edom. The storming of cities, the slaughter of the people, the burning of palaces, in which the pride of Edom had been displayed; the utter desolation of the country, and the howling of the captives, elsewhere compared to the cries of a heifer three years old, when separated from her company, all display the calamities of Edom; yea, and far greater. Upon mount Zion, the new-testament church, shall be deliverance; and all its glory shall be holiness to the Lord. Her enemies shall be numbered with the dust, while she and her children shall fill the earth, and the Lord in the midst of her will make the place of his feet glorious. Wars shall end in peace, crimes shall be superseded with righteousness, and the glory shall no more depart.
Jon 1:1 . The word of the Lord came to Jonah. The word of prophecy, delivered by Christ, the preëxistent Word, as appears from his reasoning with the prophet when angry that Nineveh was spared.—Jonah was born at Gath-hepher, and was the eldest of the twelve minor prophets. He was contemporary with Hosea, Joel, and Amos, which shows that he lived to a great age. His father, Amittai, is named because he was a man of note and honour. Of his birth and residence we know nothing more. Some of the rabbins say that he was the son of the widow of Zarephath; and others that he was the young man whom Elijah sent to anoint Jehu to be captain. Jonah, in the time of Jeroboam the second, prayed for his country in distressing wars, and the Lord said that he would not blot out the name of Israel. 2Ki 14:25 ; 2Ki 14:27 .
Jon 1:2 . Arise, go to Nineveh. This city is described in the first chapter of Nahum.
Jon 1:3 . But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish; that is, to Carthage, then a rising city in Africa, which maintained against the Romans the sovereignty of the seas, till the time of Scipio, who rased it by command of the Roman senate. They had passed the cruel decree, Delenda est Carthago; let Carthage be destroyed, or blotted from the earth. The LXX read Carthage in most passages, and their reading has the appearance of being correct, because when the Chaldaic paraphrase was made, which read Ocean for Tarshish, that great city existed no more.
Jon 1:6 . What meanest thou, oh sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God. What a melancholy sight, to behold a prophet of the Lord insensible to impending danger, which appalled every other heart with fear; and to see him reproved by a heathen mariner, who could find no better name for him than that of a sleeper, a man given up to sloth and insensibility. It is probable that being exhausted with grief and chagrin, the prophet needed some repose; yet at such a time, and in such circumstances, his self-indulgence was highly inexcusable. Jonah was however in this instance but too faithful a picture of that carnal ease and security in which unregenerate men in general are found, who in spite of all the dangers which surround them, and all the threatenings of the divine law, still continue in impenitence and unbelief, braving the terrors of an eternal world, or leaving the issue with fatal indifference, till ingulphed in endless misery and despair.—The admonition of the mariner to this infatuated prophet, Rise, call upon thy God, not only indicates that even the heathen themselves in times of great extremity invoked their imaginary deities, but as contrasted with the conduct of the Hebrew stranger, the name of whose God was known in all the earth, it administered the severest reproof. Rise then, oh sinner, and call upon thy God. He is still seated on a throne of grace, ready to hear and able to save. If you call not upon him, it will be in vain to look elsewhere for help; and if you call not upon him now, it will be in vain to do it when destruction cometh as a whirlwind, and when distress and anguish shall come upon you. Pro 1:24-28 .
Jon 1:7 . The lot fell upon Jonah. No doubt, they had precedents for this act in times of extremity. “The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.” It appeared evidently so when Haman’s lot to destroy the jews fell on the last month of the year, which gave the jews time for defence. Est 3:13 . Joshua 7 :1Sa 10:20 . The only objection which at that time could be made was, that it compelled the Lord as it were to give an answer to the enquiry.
Jon 1:17 . The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. This is the literal reading of the Hebrew, דג גדול dag gadol. But the LXX read κηντει μεγαλω, “a great whale.” St. Matthew wrote his gospel in the Syro-Chaldaic language, or vulgar tongue, and his translator has followed the LXX, which must be incorrect, for the gullet of the whale is too small to swallow a man; and whales cannot bear the warmer seas of the Mediterranean. We do not know what this great fish was; it was what God had especially prepared to save the life of a misguided prophet, and to make him a figure of Christ, who on the third day was raised up from the tomb, and as Isaac on the third day was raised from the altar.
