Obadiah is a lesser known prophet and not everyone knows of the book of Obadiah. Only one chapter long it addresses the nation of Edom, the descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau. If you are still lost as to who or where Edom is, you would know ‘in the clefts of the rock, in your lofty dwellings’ from the movies. 1 For almost three millennia attacking neighbors and then tourists have been awed by the fortress of the Edomites. Even today, the remains of the carved-in-stone city deep in the south of Jordan gives witness to how the Edomites came to think of themselves.
There is that within many of us by which we become arrogant when we feel secure, that we are able to protect ourselves against any who would come against us. The earliest inhabitants of this region, even before Esau, found the rift-gorge-plateau well suited to defense against invaders and out of this began to develop the sense of being invulnerable. ‘Who will bring me down’ was the arrogance passed down through successive occupiers of the region. Obadiah prophesies specifically of God’s intervention because of the Edomites attacks against Israel. After years of estrangement, when Jacob returned to Judea as Israel, his brother Esau had met him and made peace with him but subsequent accounts in the Bible indicate that the twelve sons of Esau held grudges against the twelve sons of Israel and now after a millennia of sniping against Israel and ignoring all of the prophecies for Edom to change their ways, God is about to answer the ‘who will bring me down’ question.
While it may be sustainable to affront others, ignoring God or even challenging God will not end well. The end of Obadiah tells us exactly how futile arrogance against the LORD will be,
Are we prone to create our own securities, to have our own fortress mentality, to live in the illusion of self-sufficiency? Does the LORD need to take away our fortress before we are willing to submit to Him and live in agreement that He is greater than we?