January 4, 2012 – Obadiah 1

At first I thought this was rather confusing and too short to really make much sense, but when you stop and think about the imagery of a brother, seeing another brother suffering, and not taking action to help but actually aiding in the suffering, you get a sense of what God is saying to Edom. This action of hurting your own brother is not something that is singular here. Joseph suffered at the hand of his brothers. Jacob left for fear of his brother. There is a deep betrayal that God is trying to get across here and because of the deep betrayal, the repercussions will be that much more severe. Looking at the footnotes, the destruction of Edom will be complete when it happens. Verse 5 and its note talk about how a thief will not steal everything, only what they want, and a person picking grapes will miss some or leave some behind, but God will leave nothing left of Edom when their time comes. What do we take from this? Being unfaithful to your family or your relation leads to greater punishment than unfaithfulness to others. That is something to think about when we here about people working so hard and so long at work that they disregard their family. Are they being more faithful to Babylon as opposed to Israel. Edom profited from siding with Babylon, for a time, but in the long run, God wants us to focus on our brother, our family. Not doing so brings about serious consequences for us.