ABDIA (Hebr. “servant of Yahweh”; in the Masoretic text ’Obadyāh, the form retained by the Jews and by Luther and his followers). — Fourth of the minor prophets of the biblical canon, author of the shortest book of the Old Testament (21 verses), containing an oracle against Edom.
1. The oracle
The Lord invites the nations to join in battle against Edom (1); they will destroy its settlements nestling among the rocks and plunder its treasure, while its former friends will withdraw, abandoning it to slaughter (2-9). This punishment is deserved because Edom acted treacherously toward Judah, joining with “the outsiders who carried away all his possessions, laying hands on his goods and massacring his fugitives” (10-14). All the nations will drink on the day of the Lord the cup of punishment and will disappear, while Judah and Israel will regain salvation by destroying Edom, enlarge their borders, and celebrate the return of the prisoners (15-21).2. Date of composition
Not a few scholars, from Knabenbauer to Theis, assign the oracle to the ninth century, interpreting it as an allusion to the invasion of Jerusalem under Joram around 845 B.C. by Arabs and Philistines (cf. II Reg. 8, 20-22; II Par. 21, 8-17), and they adduce the following literary reasons: the dependence of Jeremiah (49, 7-22) on A. (5-17), and of Amos (1-2) on Joel (4, 16), who in turn depends (3, 5) on A. (17). A. would therefore be earlier than Amos, and the earliest of the prophets. But it seems preferable to assign the oracle to the exilic period (sixth century). The description of the fall of Jerusalem (10-14), rather than recalling earlier devastations, suggests its total destruction by Nebuchadnezzar in 587, when, according to Lam. 4, 21 and Ez. 25, 11; 35, 5-15, Edom rejoiced and enriched itself with the spoils. A. would thus reflect the Jewish hatred of the Idumeans, intensified by the Exile (Ps. 136, 7; Eccl. 50, 58). The dependence of Joel on A. should be reversed, and both Jeremiah and A. may perhaps depend on an unknown earlier oracle. Th. H. Robinson arbitrarily assigns the various parts of A. to the period between 520 and 350, and the final redaction to shortly before 300.The hypothesis of a Proto-Abdiah (vv. 1-10) and a Deutero-Abdiah (vv. 11-21), the former dating from the time of Joram and the latter from the Babylonian Exile, is ruled out by the evident literary unity of the book.
3. Messianic sense. — Christian exegetes generally refer the conclusion, from V. 17 (“And on Mount Sion there shall be salvation...”) to V. 21 (“The saviours shall ascend Mount Sion to judge Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall belong to Yahweh”), to Jesus Christ and the Church. Cf. J. Knabenbauer, In Prophetas minores, I, 2nd ed., Paris 1924, pp. 354-56.
The body of A. was venerated at Samaria-Sebaste at least from the fourth century; St. Paola stayed there in 385, where “siti sunt Helisaeus et Abdias prophetas...” (St. Jerome, Epist. 108: PL 22, 536); Willibald still affirmed this around 725 (T. Tobler and A. Molinier, Itinera Hierosolymitana, 1-2 [1880], p. 269).