Obadiah 1:16

For as ye have drunk - Revelry always followed pagan victory; often, desecration. The Romans bore in triumph the vessels of the second temple, Nebuchadnezzar carried away the sacred vessels of the first. Edom, in its hatred of God’s people, doubtless regarded the destruction of Jerusalem, as a victory of polytheism (the gods of the Babylonians, and their own god Coze), over God, as Hyrcanus, in his turn, required them, when conquered, to be circumcised. God’s “holy mountain is the hill of Zion,” including mount Moriah on which the temple stood. This they desecrated by idolatrous revelry, as, in contrast, it is said that, when the pagan enemy had been destroyed, “mount Zion” should “be holiness” Obadiah 1:17. Brutal, unfeeling, excess had been one of the sins on which Joel had declared God’s sentence Joel 3:3, “they cast lots on My people; they sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.”

Pagan tempers remain the same; under like circumstances, they repeat the same circle of sins, ambition, jealousy, cruelty, bloodshed, and, when their work is done, excess, ribaldry, profaneness. The completion of sin is the commencement of punishment. “As ye,” he says, pagan yourselves and “as one of” the pagan “have drunk” in profane revelry, on the day of your brother’s calamity, “upon My holy mountain,” defiling it, “so shall all the pagan drink” continually. But what draught? a draught which shall never cease, “continually; yea, they shall drink on, and shall swallow down,” a full, large, maddening draught, whereby they shall reel and perish, “and they shall be as though they had never been” . “For whoso cleaveth not to Him Who saith, I AM, is not.” The two cups of excess and of God’s wrath are not altogether distinct. They are joined, as cause and effect, as beginning and end.

Whoso drinketh the draught of sinful pleasure, whether excess or other, drinketh there with the cup of God’s anger, consuming him. It is said of the Babylon of the world, in words very like to these Revelation 18:3, Revelation 18:6; “All nations have drank of the wine of her fornications - reward her as she has rewarded you; in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double.” “All nations” are in the first instance, all who had been leagued against God’s people; but the wide term, “all nations,” comprehends all, who, in thee, become like them. It is a rule of God’s justice for all times. At each and at all times, God requites them to the uttermost. The continuous drinking is filfilled in each. Each drinketh the cup of God’s anger, until death and in death. God employs each nation in turn to give that cup to the other. So Edom drank it at the hand of Babylon, and Babylon from the Medes, and the Medes find Persians from the Macedonians, and the Macedonians from the Romans, and they from the Barbarians. But each in turn drank continuously, until it became as though it had never been. To swallow up, and be swallowed up in turn, is the world’s history.

The details of the first stage of the excision of Edom are not given. Jeremiah distinctly says that Edom should be subjected to Nebuchadnezzar Jeremiah 27:2, Jeremiah 27:6. “Thus saith the Lord; make thee bonds and yokes, and put them upon thy neck, and send them to the king of Edom, and to the king of Moab, and to the king of the Ammonites, and to the king of Tyrus, and to the king of Zidon, by the hands of the messengers which come to Jerusalem unto Zedekiah king of Judah, and command them to say to their masters - I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant.” Holy Scripture gives us both prophecy and history; but God is at no pains to clear, either the likelihood of His history, or the fulfillment of His prophecies. The sending of messengers from these petty kings to Zedekiah looks as if there had been, at that time, a plan to free themselves jointly, probably by aid of Egypt, from the tribute to Nebuchadnezzar. It may be that Nebuchadnezzar knew of this league, and punished it afterward.

Of these six kings, we know that he subdued Zedekiah, the kings of Tyre, Moab and Ammon. Zion doubtless submitted to him, as it had aforetime to Shalmaneser . But since Nebuchadnezzar certainly punished four out of these six kings, it is probable that they were punished for some common cause, in which Edom also was implicated. In any case, we know that Edom was desolated at that time. Malachi, after the captivity, when upbraiding Israel for his unthankfulness to God, bears witness that Edom had been made utterly desolate Malachi 1:2. “I have loved Jacob, and Esau I have hated, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the jackals of the wilderness.” The occasion of this desolation was doubtless the march of Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt, when, Josephus relates, he subdued Moab and Ammon (Josephus, Ant. x. 9, 7). Edom lay in his way from Moab to Egypt. It is probable, anyhow, that he then found occasion (if he had it not) against the petty state, whose submission was needed to give him free passage between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akaba, the important access which Edom had refused to Israel, as he came out of Egypt. There Edom was “sent forth to its borders,” i. e., misled to abandon its strong fastnesses, and so, falling into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, it met with the usual lot of the conquered, plunder, death, captivity.

Malachi does not verbally allude to the prophecy of Obadiah, for his office related to the restored people of God, not to Edom. But whereas Obadiah had prophesied the slaughter of Edom and the searching out of his treasures, Malachi appeals to all the Jews, their immediate neighbors, that, whereas Jacob was in great degree restored through the love of God, Edom lay under His enduring displeasure; his mountains were, and were to continue to be Malachi 1:4, a waste; he was “impoverished;” his places were desolate. Malachi, prophesying toward (See the introduction to Malachi) 415 b.c., foretold a further desolation. A century later, we find the Nabathaeans in tranquil and established possession of Petra, having there deposited the wealth of their merchandise, attending fairs at a distance, avenging themselves on the General of Antigonus, who took advantage of their absence to surprise their retreat, holding their own against the conqueror of Ptolemy who had recovered Syria and Palestine; in possession of all the mountains around them, from where, when Antigonus, despairing of violence, tried by falsehood to lull them into security, they transmitted to Petra by fiery beacons the tidings of the approach of his army .

How they came to replace Edom, we know not. They were of a race, wholly distinct; active friends of the Maccabees (See 1 Macc. 5:24-27; 9:35. Josephus, Ant. xii. 8, 3; xiii. 1. 2. Aretas of Petra aided the Romans 3, b.c. against Jews and Idumaeans. Ant. xvii. 10. 9), while the Idumaeans were their deadly enemies. Strabo relates , that the Edomites “were expelled from the country of the Nabathaeans in a sedition, and so joined themselves to the Jews and shared their customs.” Since the alleged incorporation among the Jews is true, although at a later period, so may also the expulsion by the Nabathaeans be, although not the cause of their incorporation.

It would be another instance of requital by God, that “the men” of their “confederacy brought” them “to” their “border, the men of” their “peace prevailed against” them.” A mass of very varied evidence establishes as an historical certainty, that the Nabathaeans were of Aramaic contends that the Nabathaeans of Petra were Arabs, on the following grounds:

(1) The statements of Diodorus (xix. 94), Strabo (xvi. 2. 34. Ibid. 4. 2 21), Josephus (Ant. i. 12, 4.), S. Jerome and some latter writers.

(2) The statement of Suidas (980 a.d.) that Dusares, an Arab idol, was worshiped there.

(3) The Arabic name of Aretes, king of Petra.

are alleged; Arindela (if the same as this Ghurundel) 18 hours from Petra (Porter, Handb. p. 58); Negla, (site unknown): Auara, a degree North, (Ptol. in Reland, 463); Elji, close to Petra. But as to:

(1) Diodorus, who calls the Nabathaeans Arabs, says that they wrote “Syriac;” Strabo calls the “Edomites” Nabathaeans, and the inhabitants of Galilee, Jericho, Philadelphia and Samaria, “a mixed race of Egyptians, Arabians, and Phoenicians” (Section 34). Also Diodorus speaks of “Nabathaean Arabia” as a distinct country (xvii. 1. 21) Josephus, and Jerome (Qu. in Genesis 25:13) following him, include the whole country from the Euphrates to Egypt, and so some whose language was Aramaic. As to

(2) Dusares, though at first an Arab idol, was worshiped far and wide, in Galatia, Bostra, even Italy (See coins in Eckhel, Tanini, in Zoega de Obelisc. pp. 205-7, and Zoega himself, p. 205). As to:

(3) The kings named by Josephus, (see the list in Vincent’s Commerce, ii. 273-6) Arethas, Malchus, Obodas, may be equally Aramaic, and Obodas has a more Aramaic sound. Anyhow, the Nabathaeans, if placed in Petra by Nebuchadnezzar, were not conquerors, and may have received an Arab king in the four centuries between Nebuchadnezzar and the first Aretas known at Petra. What changes those settled in Samaria underwent! As to

(4) the names of places are not altered by a garrison in a capital. Our English names were not changed even by the Norman conquest; nor those of Samaria by the Assyrian. How many live on until now! Then of the four names, norm occurs until after the Christian era. There is nothing to connect them with the Nabathaeans. They may have been given before or long after them.) not of Arabic, origin. They were inhabitants of Southern Mesopotamia, and, according to the oldest evidence short of Holy Scripture, were the earliest inhabitants, before the invasion of the Chaldaeans. Their country, Irak, “extended lengthways from Mosul or Nineveh to Aba dan, and in breadth from Cadesia to Hulvan.” Syrian writers claimed that their’s was the primaeval language ; Muslim writers, who deny this, admit that their language was Syriac. A learned Syriac writer calls the three Chaldee names in Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Nabathaean. The surviving words of their language are mostly Syriac. Muslim writers suppose them to be descended from Aram son of Shem. Once they were a powerful nation, with a highly cultivated language. One of their books, written before the destruction of Nineveh and Babylon, itself mentions an ancient literature, specifically on agriculture, medicine, botany, and, that favorite study of the Chaldaeans, astrology, “the mysteries,” star-worship and a very extensive, elaborate, system of symbolic representation. But the Chaldees conquered them; they were subjects of Nebuchadnezzar, and it is in harmony with the later policy of the Eastern Monarchies, to suppose that Nebuchadnezzar placed them in Petra, to hold in check the revolted Idumaeans. 60 geographical miles from Petra. Anyhow, 312 b.c., Edom had long been expelled from his native mountains. He was not there about 420 b.c., the age of Malachi. Probably then, after the expulsion foretold by Obadiah, he never recovered his former possessions, but continued his robber-life along the Southern borders of Judah, unchanged by God’s punishment, the same deadly enemy of Judah.