she would go down in this war, that nothing should save her from it. If her high fortresses were even more inaccessible—yea, Ob. adds, full of exultation, if they were as high as the very stars in the sky-they would be of no avail, for behind these nations was Yahweh who would bring Edom down to the ground.-Ha! Ob. exclaims, the fall has come, and how terrible it has been! True enough, as the old prophet had said, an ordinary razzia of robbers and thieves would not account for the severity of the visitation, for oh, how terribly she had been plundered, and that, to add to her humiliation, by her own friends and former allies! They have driven her out of her strong, inaccessible mountain seats to the borders of her land! Shrewd and wary Edom had not been shrewd enough to see through their treacherous tricks, by which they prevailed over her. Ah, was not this also in fulfilment of the prophecy which had declared that on that day Yahweh would take away all wisdom from Edom in order that they might not be able to escape complete destruction? And surely, they have richly deserved this fate by their behaviour toward Judah at the time of the capture of Jerusalem by the barbarians. Oh, that awful day! As Ob. thinks of it, it suddenly stands before his mind with all its anguish and terror. He lives again through its horrors, sees the Edomites full of malicious joy over Judah's calamity, hears their words of scorn and ridicule, sees them coming into the city to loot and to plunder, sees them cutting down fugitive Jews at the crossroads, and overmastered by his emotion he breaks forth into passionate warnings, as if Edom were even now doing these things. Then he recovers himself and with one brief sentence he breaks off, As thou hast done so is it done to thee, thy reward returns upon thine own head! And with this note of satisfaction his words end.

Again the years passed on, how many we do not know, perhaps a hundred years, perhaps more. The Nabatean invaders had long driven Edom from Mt. Seir. But still the Edomites lived on as a nation, closer neighbours of Judah than before the exile, for they were settled in ancient Judean territory, in the South country, the Negeb, and they still cherished their hatred for their brother nation. The Jews had lost their political independence and military power and could no longer expect to punish foreign insolence

by force. But they had not lost their keen sense of justice and their ardent hope that some day Yahweh would set all things right in this world and restore his nation Israel to her former glory. And again a man of patriotic heart and prophetic mind arose and gave utterance to this hope and brought the judgment of Edom into this larger connection. Formerly the great movements of history as they affected the fate of Israel could be interpreted by the prophets as parts of Yahweh's plan. There were no such movements now, no nation like the Assyrians or Babylonians, no king like Cyrus that a prophetic mind could regard as Yahweh's special instrument. Not even the Nabateans were stirring; that peril was over. But Yahweh was living still and controlling the affairs of this world, and He was just, and He was still Israel's God. This our prophet knows and believes with all the intensity of his spirit. And out of the living experience of the reality and truth of these convictions there grows afresh in his heart the hope, which becomes an assurance, that the day was near when Yahweh would righten all the affairs of this world, when He would judge all nations. It would be a terrible day. But only for the other nations not for the Jews, for they had already received their punishment at the hands of Yahweh. Through this coming awful crisis those who were still left would pass unharmed and after the catastrophe they would dwell once more safely on Mt. Zion never to be driven out again by foreign invaders. On the contrary, they themselves will then drive out the nations that had dispossessed them and taken their property. Then also Edom's turn will come, then that cruel brother Esau also will receive his reward at the hands of Jacob, who will exterminate him.

VV.

17b. 18

That our author proceeded to give a further explanation of how were to be understood, has seemed to us more likely than that he stopped here at the end of v. 18 and that somebody else wrote the continuation, when in that great time of the Maccabean uprising the national feeling ran high and the reconquest of all the territory was hoped for, and when Edom again was behaving cruelly toward Judah, however appropriate then the whole prophecy might have been. Doubtless it cheered the Jews then! All the former territory with its ideal limits would be retaken by

Israel. That meant, of course, the exiles of Israel and of Judah. They will come back and reconquer all of Palestine E. and W. of the Jordan and in the N. as far as Zarepta and in the S. including the cities of the Negeb. And they will march to Mt. Zion in order to help their brethren in their expedition vs. Edom. And after that the glorious day will break, when Yahweh's kingdom will be established and when He will reign alone.

There are three modes of interpreting the book of Ob. The first interprets it as a prediction of future events. This has been the usual interpretation up to recent years. The second interprets it as a poetic narrative of past events (We.); the third as a prophetic estimate of present, just transpiring, events (Marti). In the preceding paragraphs justice has been done to all these interpretations. The older prophet who is quoted, and the authors of the appendix spoke of the future. Ob. gave a prophetic estimate of events that had taken or were just taking place in his own time.

§ 4. THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK.

It seems most reasonable to identify Ob. with the prophetic writer of the 5th cent. and not with the author of the older oracle from whom he quoted. The various identifications of Ob., e. g., with the officer of Ahab, 1 K. 183., or with the teacher of the law under Joshaphat, 2 Ch. 177, or with the overseer under Josiah, 2 Ch. 3412, or with the anonymous prophet under Amaziah, 2 Ch. 257, are all without historical basis. We know nothing of Ob. aside from his book. Tradition varies even in regard to the pronunciation of his name. The Heb. pronounces it Obadiah, worshipper of Yahweh, the Gk. Abdiah, servant of Yahweh. It has even been suggested that it is a symbolic name for prophet of Yahweh. But its frequent occurrence as a common personal name makes it unsuitable for such a use. It is obvious that we cannot characterise him from the few verses that he wrote. But we are aware that his strong way of putting things, his graphic descriptions, his love for striking pictures, his quick exclamations, his impassioned warnings throbbing with anger and sorrow, made all aglow by a wonderfully vivid imagination, reveal a strong, passionate nature uncurbed by prophetic discipline and experience.

He heard Yahweh in the voice of older prophecy and of history, and on the basis of his profound belief in the consistency and justice of Yahweh he interpreted the stirring events of his time.

His vision was narrow and the conviction that justice must triumph was expressed in particularistic form. Yet it voiced the feelings of his own day and the passionate hopes of succeeding days! No wonder that a later writer readapted the little book to his time by bringing the judgment of Edom into the larger scheme of universal judgment, and that this later writer saw in it an expression of the great national hope and added his brief interpretation, so that it became a book for all times and could pass on from age to age with its burning message, ever setting hearts on fire. Small though it was, it came to be thought worthy of a place in the canon. And again and again when their enemies oppressed them, the Jews would turn to it for consolation. After Edom had perished, it became the type of Israel's foes. The name of the enemies changed; first the Romans, then the Christians became the Edomites for the Jews! And ever through the long centuries did this little book, which contained no wonderful vision and no great word, voice the stifled cry for vengeance as it rose from the heart of the oppressed people, and, Jewish to its core, it fed the hungry soul of the suffering people again and again with the hope that the day of vengeance was coming and that the day of triumph was at hand! The voice was so eager, so insistent, so full of throbbing passion that it compelled them to listen. And though the hope it inspired was selfish and far below Israel's highest vision, it made it possible for many Jews to go on believing in the moral government of the world, in the justice of their God. Ay, the pathos of the little book!

Ob. follows directly upon Amos in the Heb. Canon. But this position is not due to historical considerations but to the reference to Edom in the conclusion of Am. The book of Ob. appeared to the editor to be an expansion of Am. 91 and so he put it after Am. Schnurrer showed this already in 1787 (Dissertatio philologica in Obadiam). It is therefore surprising that Ew. should regard the position in the canon important for fixing the date of the older oracle (Urobadja). Bu. suggests that Ob. may have been inserted into the proph. canon not only because Edom could not be passed over but in order to fill up the number twelve.

$5. THE TEXT.

The text of Ob. is, on the whole, in good condition. About the textcritical aid of the Vrss. nothing special for Ob. need be said. But in connection with the use of the parall. passage in Je. 49 it must constantly be kept in mind that our aim is to restore the text of Ob.; not the text of the orig. oracle from which Ob. quoted, but the form of the text which Ob. wrote down. Just as in an OT. quotation in Paul's letters we do not restore the reading of Œ, if he does not quote exactly, because we want Paul's way of quoting it, so in Ob. we may note his variations from the quoted oracle but must not substitute such readings unless we are certain that the variants in Ob. are not due to Ob. himself but to corruption. The restoration of the original oracle underlying Ob. and Je. is an entirely different task.

An interesting, though unconvincing, reconstruction of this older source by the aid of the metre was presented in ThStK., 1907, pp. 31543, by H. Bekel, Ein vorexilisches Orakel über Edom in der Klageliederstrophe-die gemeinsame Quelle von Obadja 1-9 und Jeremia 49, 7–22. Ein Beitrag zur Lösung des Verwandtschaftsproblems in beiden Texten.

§ 6. THE METRE.

The prophets wrote their messages in rhythmic form and the recognition of their metrical scheme is of great importance for textual and literary criticism. This holds true of the book of Ob. also. And we observe that an arrangement of its rhythmic structure, which suggests itself naturally and which requires no artificial reconstruction, corroborates our literary results. It shows that Ob. did quote from an older oracle in the first section, that he himself preferred the pentameter movement and that he used it wherever he did not feel himself bound to the metrical structure of the older oracle, as is clear from those verses in which he gives his own interpretation, as in vv. 6. 7. 12-14. Indeed, even in his quotation from the older oracle, vv. Зав. 4 are a tetrastich of pentameters