Abdias

ABDIAS (Hebrew 'servant of Yahweh'; Masoretic text 'Obadyāh, form used by Jews and by Luther and 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), whose villages nestled among the rocks they will destroy, plundering its treasure, while its former friends will withdraw, leaving it prey to slaughter (2-9). Such punishment is its due because Edom acted broadly against Judah, joining with "the foreigners who carried off all its goods, laid hands on its possessions and massacred its fugitives" (10-14). All the nations will drink on the day of the Lord the cup of punishment and will vanish, while Judah and Israel will regain salvation by destroying Edom, will extend their borders and will celebrate the return of the prisoners (15-21).

2. Date of composition

Not a few, from Knabenbauer to Theis, place the oracle in the 9th century, taking it to allude to the invasion of Jerusalem under Joram around 845 B.C. by Arabs and Philistines (cf. II Kings 8:20-22; II Chron. 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), which in turn depends (3:5) on A. (17). Therefore A. would be earlier than Amos, and the most ancient of the prophets. But it seems preferable to assign the oracle to the exilic period (6th century). The description of the collapse of Jerusalem (10-14), rather than to earlier devastations, suggests the 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 therefore reflect the Jewish hatred of the Idumeans, increased by the exile (Ps. 136:7; Eccl. 50:58). The dependence of Joel on A. would have to be reversed, and both Jeremiah and A. perhaps depend on an unknown earlier oracle. Th. H. Robinson arbitrarily places the various parts of A. between 520 and 350, and the final redaction shortly before 300.

The hypothesis of a Proto-Obadiah (vv. 1-10) and a Deutero-Obadiah (vv. 11-21), the first going back to Joram, the second to the Babylonian exile, is excluded by the evident literary unity of the book.

3. Messianic sense

Christian exegetes generally refer to Jesus Christ and to the Church the closing passage, from v. 17 ("And on Mount Zion there shall be salvation...") to 21 ("The saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau, and the kingdom shall belong to Yahweh"). 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 4th century; St. Paula stopped in 385 where "siti sunt Helisaeus et Abdias prophetas..." (St. Jerome, Epist. 108: PL 22, 536); Willibald still affirms it around 725 (T. Tobler and A. Molinier, Itinera Hierosolymitana, 1-2 [1880], p. 269).