Torah Reading is Va-Yishlah (Genesis 32:4- 36:43); Haftorah is Obadiah 1:1-21
By Irv Jacobs, M.D.
LA JOLLA, California — This single chapter is the only extant writing of the minor prophet Obadiah. Wordage is mainly poetry, its ending in prose. The setting is the Babylonian destruction of the first Judean Temple c. 586 BCE, in which the enemy nation Edom participated.
This time a Hebrew prophet rails against enemy Edom, not his own leaders. The poetry is less than exquisite Hebrew poetry, as noted by Professor Robert Alter, emeritus professor at the University of California Berkeley. The translation and commentaries are from Alter’s opus Prophets. [1]
The connection to the Torah portion is that both deal with Esau/Edom. In the Torah portion, the returning Jacob after 20 years, meets with his long estranged brother Esau in a reasonably polite reunion. In this Haftorah, the prophet roundly condemns the nation Edom, ‘progeny of Esau’, now an enemy to Judea, for its participation in the Babylonian destruction of its nation and the first Temple. [2]
The prophet predicts Edom’s destruction and withdrawal from subsequent history. However, over subsequent centuries, the name Edom became a euphemism for oppressors. Accordingly Rome, a later enemy in the first century C.E. is an “Edom,” as was Christianity.
Here are excerpts from Obadiah, and commentaries from Professor Alter.
A report we have heard from the LORD,
and an envoy among the nations was sent.
Rise and let us rise against her for battle.
Look, I Have made you last among the nations,
you are utterly spurned.
You’re heart’s arrogance deceived you
who dwell in the clefts of the rock…[3]
Should you go high as the eagle
and should you nest among the stars,
from there I would bring you down, said the LORD…
To the border they have sent you off,…
all the men allied with you…
have laid a trap beneath you…[4]
Why, on that day, said the LORD:
I shall destroy the sages from Edom…
And your survivors shall be terror-stricken, Teman…[5]
On the day you stood aloof,
on the day strangers seized his wealth
and aliens entered his gates,
and for Jerusalem they cast lots,
and you were as one of them.
And do not gloat on your brother’s day,
on the day of his downfall…[6]
And do not stand at the crossroads
to cut off his fugitives [7]…
For as you drank on My holy mountain,
all the nations shall drink evermore. [8]…
But on Mount Zion there shall be a remnant,
and it shall be sacrosanct,
Now comes the necessary (militant) ‘upbeat’ ending:
and the house of Jacob shall be a fire
and the house of Joseph a flame,
and the house of Esau shall be straw,
and they shall ignite them and consume them.
and the house of Esau shall have no survivor, [9]
And this polemicist, Obadiah, then ends with a chant of hostile prose:
And they shall take hold of Esau’s mountain and the lowland of the Philistines, and etc. etc.
And this force of exiles of Jerusalem…they shall take hold of (all Judea), i.e. and go up Mount Zion to exact judgment against Esau’s mountain, and (kingdom).
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Unlike other prophets’ polemics, which were against their Israelite leaders, this polemic is completely against Edom, the legendary hostile ‘brothers’ of the Israelites. Obadiah pulls no punches, even to the point of boorishness, and gives no graceful quarter to his target.
I see Obadiah as a neophyte Hebrew prophet who made a single cameo appearance on the prophetic stage. According to Professor Alter, he is lacking in literary finesse to carry-off his self-assigned messaging.
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[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Prophets Vol. 2, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2019, pp. 1281-84
[2] Etz Hayim, The Jewish Publication Society, 2001, New York, p. 221
[3] This refers to Edom and its outrages against Judea, and its coming retribution. Edom resides in mountain country.
[4] Measure for measure: As Edom betrayed his brother Judea, so too will Edom be betrayed by its allies. Alter comments here on the failed words of this old Hebrew poetry, i.e. as unprofessional writing.
[5] Teman was a key city in Edom.
[6] greedily to divide up Jerusalem, taking pleasure at Judea’s loss
[7] i.e. brutally to kill those stragglers attempting to flee, not unlike Amalek in the Torah.
[8] to celebrate Edom’s downfall
[9] i.e. On a roll with verbal curses of revenge.
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Irv Jacobs is a retired medical doctor who delights in Torah analysis. He often delivers a drosh at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla, and at his chavurah.