Obadiah opens with a charge against Edom's pride. 3"You who live in the clefts of the rock" describes a people living in mountain strongholds, and the Hebrew word for rock, sela, is also a place name in Edom (2 Kings 14:7). Edom had reason for confidence, since it lived in high country that was hard to reach, and the oracle opens with a report that nations are already rising against it. The pride was about to meet an army. The trouble is what the confidence had become. Edom looked up at its cliffs and asked, 3"Who will bring me down to the ground?"
The LORD answers the question directly. 4"Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, from there I will bring you down." No height is high enough to put a nation out of reach of the God who made the mountain. Every security Edom trusted, the rock, the wealth, the allies, and the famous wisdom of Teman, is taken up in the verses that follow and shown to be smaller than the pride resting on it.
At verse 10 the charge moves from pride to something worse. 10"Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you." Edom and Judah came from Esau and Jacob, twin brothers, and the law told Israel, "You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother" (Deuteronomy 23:7). The sin here is a betrayal inside a family, and the brotherhood is the reason the charge is so heavy. Strangers might be expected to plunder. A brother was expected to help.
Verses 11 to 14 show how it happened, and each step is a little worse than the one before. First Edom 11"stood aloof" while strangers carried off Jerusalem's wealth. That was bystanding, and it looks harmless. Then the verse names where bystanding leads: 11"you were like one of them." Staying out of it turned out to be a side. Next comes gloating, then looting, and last, standing at the crossroads to cut off Judah's fugitives and hand over the survivors. What began as watching ended as helping the enemy.
The commands in these verses read like a list of what Edom already did. "Do not gloat," "do not loot," "do not hand over." Obadiah lays them out one by one so that no reader can mistake how a brother's indifference became a brother's crime. Verse 15 gives the standard the whole oracle runs on: "As you have done, it shall be done to you" (Obadiah 15).
Most of us will never stand at a crossroads and turn a refugee over to soldiers. The earlier steps are closer to home. There is the day a brother or sister falls and we stay aloof, the satisfaction we quietly take in someone else's failure, and the conversation we join because everyone else is already in it. Pride tells us the fall could never reach us, and Obadiah asks why we are sure.
Prayer
LORD, you see through every rock we hide behind and every security we call our own. Forgive us for the times we stood aloof from a brother's trouble and told ourselves that watching was harmless. Bring down whatever pride has made its nest among the stars in us. Teach us to run toward a brother in his day of distress. In Jesus' name, amen.