Secular Bible Study, Transcript

Obadiah: God Punishes A Nation That He Hated From Birth | Secular Bible Study (Episode 31) - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz3g5ZXKcLY

Transcript:

Welcome to Mind Shift. I'm Brandon. Today is episode 31 of my Secular Bible Study series, in which we look at Obadiah, the shortest book in the Old Testament by a long shot—one chapter, 21 verses. It will also be my quickest episode until we get to some of the later books in the New Testament, like Third John, for example. I'm trying out some new colors and arrangements as I get used to the studio space, and we will probably shoot this particular series on the other side of the room with the screens in the background, like what you're used to, but I don't have that set up yet. So here we are.

Last note before we dive in: I'm not going to cover the main seven sections that we typically do. I'm going to give you an overview of what this book contains and why it's important. I do think that it is important in continuing to understand this God, this particular group of people, Israel at the time, what they thought of themselves and those around them, and how they were organizing themselves in the world, if you will, using their own biblical history to do so. So let's just dive right in.

What do we get in these 21 verses? Well, in my estimation, it's broken down into three parts, so we're going to walk through those parts. Part one is "Edom Will Be Humbled." This is the oracle; this is Obadiah professing what he has heard from the Lord. Now let's talk about Edom because that is the most important part of understanding this book. There are a couple of hints that we get throughout the book, as well as what we can know from a secular and objective perspective. Edom was a real place on the other side of the Dead Sea from Israel, so it is a neighbor. It has a tangled past with the Israelite people. It was involved in political, military, and economic trade and protection with some of the larger enemies of the time, like the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and they were a mountain people. Edom is more of a valley and mountain kind of spot, and there's almost this—you know what it is, and I think I'm going to title this as such—this is like a revenge fantasy. You know who we've always never really liked, and he's going to list some reasons in the second part, and I'll give you some of that historical backing. But they are just so petty throughout this book, even knowing the fact—the reason I brought this up—that Edom was kind of up high on high ground. We get some of that imagery: "We will bring you down, down to the low place," etc. Things like this. It's petty.

So let's get into this first part: "Edom Will Be Humbled." Thus says the Lord God concerning Edom: "Behold, I will make you small among the nations; you shall be utterly despised. The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, 'Who will bring me down to the ground?' Though you soar aloft like the eagles, though your nest is set among the stars, from there I will bring you down," declares the Lord. So once again, I just want to point out, as always, this is not just the history of a people group at war. This Bible is claiming that God himself is mad with Edom and that he is going to bring them down. Let's not take credit away when God wants to take it so badly.

In verse six, we get this: "How Esau has been pillaged, his treasures sought out." And so this is something that I want to bring to your attention. I think this is the most important thing to understand, and some of you may simply just not know. If we go all the way back to Genesis 25 and also Genesis 36, we get the stories of Esau and Jacob, who are the twin sons of Isaac. Now Jacob becomes Israel; he gets a name change after he wrestles with God, and Esau becomes Edom. Now, I've heard many different things about the Hebrew word "Edom," that it's similar in terms of "Adam," meaning human, so Edom is supposed to biblically represent humanity, but also Edom just meaning red, which we get the description of Esau as red and hairy at birth, and we have the twin rivalry. But why is it a rivalry? Why do the Israelites not like them? What has gone so bad between the blood of these brothers?

Well, if we go down to the second part of this book, we get Edom's violence against Jacob, and it's God making his case for why it is justified to do everything he said he's going to do in the first part here: "Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever. On the day that you stood aloof, on the day that strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them." I've heard two things about what this particular part can be referring to, and it kind of depends on when you believe it to be written. The best guess is around the 5th century BC or the post-exile period, and the author, by the way, just so we kind of cover off on this, traditionally is attributed to, you guessed it, Obadiah, but of course, there's contention if it was really him or not, and it comes down to the dating. But one idea here is that God is mad at Edom for not doing anything during the Babylonian captivity when they came in and defeated Israel and took these people captive. Edom stood by; he's like one of them. But the other one, and I think this one might make a little more sense because we actually have biblical reference to it, and this comes from Numbers 20:14-21 if you want to look it up, is that Edom refused to let the Israelites cross through when they were making their exodus from slavery in Egypt. Either way, if both of these examples are true, or just one, or neither, but the biblical writers believed it, this is the reason for the vengeance.

All throughout these prophetic books, we get vengeance on two peoples: the Israelite people for disobeying God and the nations around Israel for the part that they have played. What is interesting is that in almost all cases, God has been the one who has caused the enemy nations around them to do what they did because he was using those nations to inflict judgment on Israel, and then he would turn around and at some random time curse or destroy some of these surrounding nations for what they did in either hurting Israel or not defending Israel against those who were. So I think it's just so interesting; it's like God's playing chess with himself, and he's losing on both sides.

So then we get to the third part, and this is the transition period between the beginning of the book, where it's all about Edom, and this latter part: "The day of the Lord is near, for the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations." So we have switched from Edom, who is, again, if you're kind of taking like a Tim Mackie interpretation here, supposed to represent humanity, all of mankind. God's judgment is not just on this one people for their travesty; it is on all the nations because they have all fallen short. And a lot of this can then point to the New Testament, at least this is the Christian tradition in interpretation, versus, say, the Jewish tradition that is, nope, these were just a neighbor who did wrong and hurt us and prevented us from achieving our goals that were our God-given right, and so God had to enact his judgment and vengeance. But again, reading more: "As you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head. For as you have drunk on my holy mountain, so all the nations shall drink continually; they shall drink and swallow and shall be as though they had never been." And it goes on from here, and then, of course, we get this little passage of hope starting in 19, going through 20 and 21, "The Kingdom of the Lord," and this is about the restoration of Israel.

And that's the book. That's it. In this short little book, we don't really have that many contradictions or problematic passages. I mean, the whole thing is as problematic as everything else we've read in Joel and Hosea and everywhere else, that is, God taking away the free will of people to enact his own judgment and vengeance because of his love and his protection of one group of people and not the rest of them. I mean, even going back, if you are going to believe that these cities were established because of these two people, Jacob and Esau, these twins, obviously God gave his favor to Jacob over Esau, so you can't then turn around and get mad at what has happened when you have left these other people. I mean, he's completely been residing with Israel. I just think that's so funny, and here we seem to get what I think is clear: that Edom is going to be completely destroyed. So this would be the only contradiction I would bring up, from archaeological evidence as well as from evidence that we have from the surrounding communities, again like the Babylonians and Assyrians. We know that Edom survived for centuries after this and eventually kind of withered away and assimilated into some of the surrounding cultures. But we know quite a bit about them; we understand the gods that they worshiped. They were kind of the farming and fertility gods, which were very common. We know how they traded. In fact, Petra—you guys are probably familiar with the ancient city of Petra, the one that's kind of carved into the walls in what is now modern-day Jordan—this would have been a main trading hub that they used, etc. Like, we know a lot about this city, and we know that they were not utterly destroyed or wiped out by the Israelites in this time frame. So once again, we have God saying he's going to completely destroy a nation, and then what we really find is it just didn't happen, which is why I'm titling this "Revenge Fantasies for Israel." Remember when you didn't help us? Remember when our patriarch didn't like you, right? Like, oh, we've got bad blood with you. I just think it's so little, again, nothing you would expect from the God of all creation.

So that's it. I hope I gave you a perspective that you didn't have. I hope you learned something that you did not know. If you have anything else that you think I should know or I got wrong, please let me know in the comments. I learn so much from you guys as well. And now, next Thursday, we get to cover Jonah, which is a really fun book and one that everybody knows, as opposed to this book, which nobody knows. So I'll be excited to talk about the four chapters of Jonah next week. And until then, keep thinking.

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