OBADIAH (1r:I:11Y and ni* servant of Ye hovah), the name of several peisons mentioned in Scripture.
I. (Sept. 'o)4sico.) One of the minor prophets. Of his history nothing certain is known. Some have inferred, from ver. loth of his prophecy, that he lived and wrote while Jerusalem was under the power of the Chaldwans, and after the deportation of its inhabitants to Babylon, and that he was pro bably himself one of the exiles ; but this inference rests on an assumption which, as will be seen after wards, is questionable. The attempts to identify him with one or other of the persons of the same name mentioned in Scripture are mere unfounded conjectures. Entirely baseless also is the sugges tion of Augusti (Einleit, sec. 225), that in the title of this prophecy, is an appellative = a servant of or 'some pious person ;' for the word is never so used, and all the ancient versions give it as a proper name ; nor is there any ground for the assertion of Abarbanel, that he was an Idumsean who, on becoming a proselyte to Judaism, took the name of servant or worshipper of Jehovah (Frac! in Ezech., p. 153, col. 4 ; see also Jarchi on ver. 1. of the Prophecy).
Obadiah's prophecy stands the fourth in order among the minor prophets in the Hebrew, and the fifth in the LXX. It is very short, but there is no reason to regard it (with Eichhorn and others) as only a fragment of a longer writing. It is a compact and complete composition, and has no appearance of having been detached from another work. De \Vette suggests that it was probably called forth by the exultation of the Edomites over the fall of Jerusalem ; but Hengstenberg (Gesch. Bileams, p. 253), Havernick (Einlell. ii. 321), and Caspari (Der Proph. Obadja), whilst admitting that the prophecy relates to the time of the captivity, would assign an earlier date to its composition ; placing that in the reign of Uzziah, and regarding the reference to the Chaldrean invasion as prophe tic. This is a medium position between that of those who assign an early date to the composition as Hoffmann ( Weissagung and Erfiillzrng, I. 201), who makes Obadiah the oldest of the prophets and the contemporary of king Joram ; and that of those who assign to it a post-exilian date. For this medium date there is much to be said. That the prophecy was written before the taking of Jerusalem by the Chaldreans, seems probable from the language of warning addressed to the Edomites (I2-14), not to exult over the fall of that city, a strain which would have been inappropriate if the city had already been captured and their exultation passed. Again, certain passages in this prophecy so closely resemble passages in the prophecies of Jeremiah (comp. Obad. 1, 3, 8, 9, it, 16 with Jer. xlix. 7-22), that one of these prophets must have seen and quoted from the writing of the other. Now, in
favour of the originality and priority of Obadiah, it may be urged—I. That in Obadiah the pro phecy against Edom forms a complete and rounded whole, while the similar passages in Jeremiah are less connected, and have the appearance of de tached quotations. 2. Whilst in the passages of Jeremiah relating to Edom, which are not to be found in Obadiah, there are many expressions pe culiar to the former ; in those which are common to both there are none such, which gives to the passages in Jeremiah the aspect of being borrowed. 3. The variations of expression in the passages com pared indicate on the part of Jeremiah the opera tion of a correcfing hand, as ex. gr., in the substi tution of the easier '1711)nvi (Jer. xlix. 14) for the more difficult ))1)nri (Obad. 0, and the absence of the explanatory )Yvorri of Jeremiah from the pas sage in Obadiah ; and in the substitution of the paraphrastic expression rip .4 by Jere : • ; miah (ver. 16) for the less easily construed words of Obadiah (ver. 3), etc. 4. The ma ; logy of other prophecies of Jeremiah against foreign nations, which are generally based on the utterances of other prophets. These considerations render it probable that Jeremiah had the prophecy of Oba diah before him when he wrote the passages re ferred to ; in which case Obadiah must have been anterior to him. The position of the book of Obadiah, also, in the canon, between that of Amos and that of Jonah, gives a traditional evidence of his being the contemporary of these prophets. His style, moreover, is more that of the older than of the later prophets, a point which Ewald virtually admits when he resorts to the utterly unsupported conjec ture of an early lost prophecy, which both Obadiah and Jeremiah have quoted i. 399). And, in fine, there is in the prophecy of Obadiah which betrays a later nothing than that of king Uz ziah ; for to adduce the allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem in ver. 20, is simply, after the usual fashion of those who would impugn the predictive character of the ancient prophetic utterances, to reason in a circle, proving the late date of the prophecy by the assertion that it was written after the event, and proving that it was written after the event by the assertion of the late date of the pro phecy. It may he added that whilst Obadiah seems to have borrowed some of his expressions from Joel and Amos (comp. Joel i. 15 •, iii. 3, 5, 17, with Obad. 11, 15 • Amos ix. 2 with Obad. 4, and Amos ix. 12 with &ad. 19), and even from the early prophecy of Balaam (comp. ver. 18, 19, with Num. xxiv. 18, 19 ; and ver. 4 with Num. xxiv. 21), there is no trace of quotation from or allusion to any later writer. This affords strong confirma tion of the date above assigned to his writing.