Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Obadiah 1:2-4
YHWH's Sentence On Edom (Obadiah 1:2).
YHWH's message to Edom was simple and straightforward. They had exalted themselves to the heavens, confident of their safety in their mountain strongholds, but they would be brought from their eminence and humiliated.
“Behold, I have made you small among the nations.
You are greatly despised.
The pride of your heart has deceived you,
O you who dwell in the clefts of the rock,
Whose habitation is high, who says in his heart,
‘Who shall bring me down to the ground?' ”
Although Edom prided itself on its security in its mountain fastnesses, YHWH warned that He would bring them down, and make them greatly despised. Indeed in His mind He had already made them small among the nations and humbled them in spite of the security of their dwellingplaces. Their dwelling ‘in the clefts of the rock' may refer to their capital city of Sela, or to nearby Petra where the houses were literally built into the rocky formations on a mountain plateau, or both. Alternately it may simply indicate the fact that they lived safely in the mountains in their strongholds. If the prophecy came before the time of Amaziah of Judah we know that he would very shortly demonstrate their vulnerability (2 Kings 14:7). If it came after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem it was accomplished by an Arabian invasion.
“Though you mount on high as the eagle,
And though your nest be set among the stars,
I will bring you down from there,”
Oracle of YHWH.'
In fact their mountainous hideouts would do them no good. For even were they to mount like an eagle and make their nest on the highest peaks ‘among the stars', He would bring them down from there. This was the oracle of YHWH, against which there was no answer.