Monday, July 9

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Monday

“Who was this Guy?”

Before we jump into this post let me get something out of the way right now. If you’ve read the book of Obadiah on your own before, I’m impressed. Let’s face it, most of us have never read Obadiah before. Most of us couldn’t identify the message of Obadiah if we had to, heck most of us probably didn’t know there was a book title “Obadiah” in the Bible! I’ll be honest with you in telling you that I was right there with you a few months ago. When I was assigned the book of Obadiah to preach my first thought was, “Oba-who?” 

Even though I was initially underwhelmed when I found out I’d have to preach Obadiah I’m now incredibly excited to work through the book this week on the blog. I’m excited because this short little book is jam packed with truth for us about God, His Judgment, and His Mercy. Obadiah is a book that shows in a powerful and tangible way how fierce the love of God for His Children is. Before we get into all that though we’ve got to start with some background, if you’re anything like I was a few months ago you don’t know the first thing about Obadiah, so we’ll start there trying to figure out who He is. 

Unlike some of the Minor Prophets who are introduced with a lengthy introduction that dives into their genealogy and gives valuable identifying information about them, Obadiah gets no such introduction. Rather the only introduction we’re given for the book is this in verse 1, “The vision of Obadiah. This is what the Sovereign Lord says about Edom.” So all we know about this prophet is his name, Obadiah. But just to make things a little murkier we actually don’t know that his name was Obadiah. In Hebrew the name Obadiah means “servant or worshiper of YHWH” and it was often used as a title, thus it could just be indicating this writer’s subservience to the Lord.  

So we don’t know much about the author of this book. The question then, is if we don’t know who wrote the book, how can we trust it? That’s a fair and important question. Even though we don’t know who wrote the book of Obadiah it’s included within the Canon and within the “Book of the 12” of the Minor Prophets because its message, themes, and content all fall squarely within the Biblical narrative. In other words we can trust the book of Obadiah because there’s nothing in it to suggest that its author was anything other than inspired. We can trust its inspiration as the message within it is consistent with the messages found throughout the other Minor Prophets, and within the rest of the Canon of Scripture. 

Commentator on Obadiah, Paul Raabe, goes as far as to summarize Obadiah like this, he says, “Obadiah flows in the mainstream of the Israelite prophetic tradition…this short book eloquently summarizes many of the great prophetic themes.” So all that is to say, even though we don’t know much about the authorship of Obadiah, we can trust its message. 


Grant Diamond