The Spirit in the prophets constantly looks beyond Israel and Judah, taking notice of the nations of the Gentiles. “An ambassador,” as Obadiah speaks “is sent among the heathen,” now and again. So, Nahum was sent to Nineveh, and now Obadiah is sent to Edom.
But from the very beginning, the Lord had a word or controversy with Edom, as by His prophet He now has. “I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness” (Mal. 1:33And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. (Malachi 1:3)). Esau was a profane one. He sold his interest in the Lord for a mess of pottage. He was “a man of the field” and “a cunning hunter.” He prospered in his generation. He loved the field, and he knew how to use it. He set his heart on the present life, and knew well how to turn its capabilities to the account of his enjoyments.
His history was destined to be a very singular one. It was also to prove, again and again, the occasion of sorrow to God’s people, though it will be found that Israel had entailed this sorrow on themselves.
“The elder shall serve the younger” was the word of God in favor of Jacob, before the children were born. But Jacob did not wait in patience of faith, until the Lord in His own time and way made His promise good. The promise, therefore, gets laden with reserves, and difficulties, and burdens. It shall assuredly be made good in the end; but by reason of this way of Jacob, his unbelief and policy, the elder shall give the younger much trouble.
Accordingly, Esau got a promise from the Lord, through his father Isaac, to this effect, “Thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above, and by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass, when thou shalt have the dominion, thou shalt break his yoke from oft thy neck” (Gen. 27:39-4039And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; 40And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck. (Genesis 27:39‑40)).
But still, “the elder shall serve the younger.” This promise is yea and amen. Amos is a witness of this to us, when he says, Israel shall possess Edom (Amos 9). And our prophet, Obadiah, is another witness of the same, telling us that by and by saviors shall come to Zion, and judge the mount of Esau (Obad. 1:2121And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's. (Obadiah 21)). In early days the Lord gave Mount Seir to Esau for a possession; and what He gave him He would preserve to him; and accordingly, He would not let Israel, as they passed along the borders of the land of Edom, in their wilderness-journey, to touch with hostile hand a village or an acre of it. But long after all this, not only after the wilderness-journey of the children of Jacob, but after the times of David and of Jehoram, Edom made fresh trouble for himself, as we read in this prophet. He made merry in the day of Jacob’s captivity. He looked on his brother with congratulation and malice, “in the day that he became a stranger.” He rejoiced in the fall of Jerusalem under the sword of the Chaldean. Even Moab might have been a dwelling-place for the captives of Zion (Isa. 16:44Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler: for the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land. (Isaiah 16:4)); but Edom stood in the way to cut them off. (No time is given to this prophecy, but it must have been uttered between the destruction of Jerusalem and that of the land of Edom by the Chaldeans, God’s sword in that day.)