The book of Obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament. Nothing is known of the author except his name, which means ‘servant of the Lord’. The book is a denunciation of one of the Israelites’ oldest enemies – the Edomites.

1-2. Obadiah hears a message from God about the Edomites. God says that He will bring the Edomites down, make them despised, ransack their treasures, destroy their wise men, and that everyone in Esau’s mountains will be ‘cut down in the slaughter’. God says that the deeds of the Edomites will be returned upon their own heads, and that ‘there will be no survivors from the house of Esau’.

The book of Obadiah is a reflection of a deep-seated hatred by the children of Jacob, as the Israelites called themselves, toward the children of Esau, from whom the Edomites were thought to be descended. The story of this biblical feud begins in Genesis 25:19-26. Obadiah recruits the God of love – so they say, but with no evidence – onto his side in a long-standing and bloody feud.

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