Albert Barnes Commentary Obadiah 1:16

"For as ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, so shall all the nations drink continually; yea, they shall drink, and swallow down, and shall be as though they had not been." — Obadiah 1:16 (ASV)

For as you have drunk - Revelry always followed pagan victory; often, desecration. The Romans bore in triumph the vessels of the second temple; Nebuchadnezzar carried away the sacred vessels of the first. Edom, in its hatred of God’s people, doubtless regarded the destruction of Jerusalem as a victory of polytheism (the gods of the Babylonians and their own god Coze) over God, just as Hyrcanus, in his turn, required them, when conquered, to be circumcised.

God’s “holy mountain is the hill of Zion,” including Mount Moriah on which the temple stood. This they desecrated by idolatrous revelry, as, in contrast, it is said that when the pagan enemy had been destroyed, mount Zion should be holiness (Obadiah 1:17). Brutal, unfeeling excess had been one of the sins on which Joel had declared God’s sentence (Joel 3:3): they cast lots on My people; they sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.

Pagan tempers remain the same; under like circumstances, they repeat the same circle of sins: ambition, jealousy, cruelty, bloodshed, and, when their work is done, excess, ribaldry, profaneness.

The completion of sin is the commencement of punishment. As you, he says—you pagans yourselves and “as one of” the pagans—have drunk in profane revelry on the day of your brother’s calamity, upon My holy mountain, defiling it, so shall all the pagan drink continually.

But what drink? A drink that shall never cease, continually; yea, they shall drink on, and shall swallow down—a full, large, maddening drink by which they shall reel and perish—and they shall be as though they had never been. “For whoever does not cleave to Him Who says, I AM, is not.” The two cups of excess and of God’s wrath are not altogether distinct.

They are joined, as cause and effect, as beginning and end.

Whoever drinks the drink of sinful pleasure, whether excess or other, also drinks the cup of God’s anger, consuming him. It is said of the Babylon of the world, in words very like these (Revelation 18:3, Revelation 18:6): All nations have drunk of the wine of her fornications—reward her as she has rewarded you; in the cup which she has filled, fill to her double.

“All nations” refers in the first instance to all who had been leagued against God’s people; but the wide term “all nations” comprehends all who, in you, become like them.

It is a rule of God’s justice for all times. At each and at all times, God requites them to the uttermost. The continuous drinking is fulfilled in each. Each drinks the cup of God’s anger, until death and in death.

God employs each nation in turn to give that cup to the other. So Edom drank it at the hand of Babylon, and Babylon from the Medes, and the Medes and Persians from the Macedonians, and the Macedonians from the Romans, and they from the Barbarians. But each in turn drank continuously, until it became as though it had never been. To swallow up, and be swallowed up in turn, is the world’s history.

The details of the first stage of the excision of Edom are not given. Jeremiah distinctly says that Edom should be subjected to Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 27:2–4, Jeremiah 27:6): Thus says the Lord: Make bonds and yokes for yourself, and put them upon your neck, and send them to the king of Edom, and to the king of Moab, and to the king of the Ammonites, and to the king of Tyrus, and to the king of Zidon, by the hands of the messengers who come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah, and command them to say to their masters—I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant. Holy Scripture gives us both prophecy and history; but God is at no pains to clarify either the likelihood of His history or the fulfillment of His prophecies.

The sending of messengers from these petty kings to Zedekiah looks as if there had been, at that time, a plan to free themselves jointly from the tribute to Nebuchadnezzar, probably by aid of Egypt. It may be that Nebuchadnezzar knew of this league and punished it afterward.

Of these six kings, we know that he subdued Zedekiah, the kings of Tyre, Moab, and Ammon. Zion doubtless submitted to him, as it had previously to Shalmaneser. But since Nebuchadnezzar certainly punished four out of these six kings, it is probable that they were punished for some common cause, in which Edom also was implicated.

In any case, we know that Edom was desolated at that time. Malachi, after the captivity, when upbraiding Israel for its unthankfulness to God, bears witness that Edom had been made utterly desolate (Malachi 1:2–3): I have loved Jacob, and Esau I have hated, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the jackals of the wilderness.

The occasion of this desolation was doubtless the march of Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt when, Josephus relates, he subdued Moab and Ammon (Josephus, Ant. x.9.7). Edom lay in his way from Moab to Egypt. It is probable, anyway, that he then found occasion (if he did not already have it) against the petty state, whose submission was needed to give him free passage between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akaba—the important access that Edom had refused to Israel as he came out of Egypt.

There Edom was “sent forth to its borders,” that is, misled to abandon its strongholds, and so, falling into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, it met with the usual lot of the conquered: plunder, death, captivity.

Malachi does not verbally allude to the prophecy of Obadiah, for his office related to the restored people of God, not to Edom. But whereas Obadiah had prophesied the slaughter of Edom and the searching out of his treasures, Malachi appeals to all the Jews, their immediate neighbors, that, whereas Jacob was in great degree restored through the love of God, Edom lay under His enduring displeasure; his mountains were, and were to continue to be (Malachi 1:4), a waste; he was impoverished; his places were desolate. Malachi, prophesying toward (See the introduction to Malachi) 415 BC, foretold a further desolation.

A century later, we find the Nabathaeans in tranquil and established possession of Petra. They had deposited the wealth of their merchandise there, attended fairs at a distance, and avenged themselves on the General of Antigonus, who took advantage of their absence to surprise their retreat.

They held their own against the conqueror of Ptolemy, who had recovered Syria and Palestine. They were in possession of all the mountains around them, from which, when Antigonus, despairing of violence, tried by falsehood to lull them into security, they transmitted to Petra by fiery beacons the news of his army’s approach.

How they came to replace Edom, we do not know. They were of a wholly distinct race; active friends of the Maccabees (see 1 Maccabees 5:24-27 and 9:35; Josephus, Ant. xii.8.3 and xiii.1.2. Also, Aretas of Petra aided the Romans in 3 BC against Jews and Idumaeans [Josephus, Ant. xvii.10.9]), while the Idumaeans were their deadly enemies.

Strabo relates that the Edomites “were expelled from the country of the Nabathaeans in a sedition, and so joined themselves to the Jews and shared their customs.” Since the alleged incorporation among the Jews is true, although at a later period, so also may the expulsion by the Nabathaeans be true, although not the cause of their incorporation.

It would be another instance of requital by God that the men of their confederacy brought them to their border, the men of their peace prevailed against them. A mass of very varied evidence establishes as an historical certainty that the Nabathaeans were of Aramaic origin. It is contended, however, that the Nabathaeans of Petra were Arabs, on the following grounds:

1. The statements of Diodorus (xix.94), Strabo (xvi.2.34; Ibid., 4.2 and 21), Josephus (Ant. i.12.4), St. Jerome, and some later writers.
2. The statement of Suidas (AD 980) that Dusares, an Arab idol, was worshiped there.
3. The Arabic name of Aretas, king of Petra.
4. Certain place names: Arindela (if the same as this Ghurundel), 18 hours from Petra (Porter, Handbook, p. 58); Negla (site unknown); Auara, a degree North (Ptolemy in Reland, p. 463); Elji, close to Petra.

But as to these points:

1. Regarding the first point (the statements of ancient writers): Diodorus, who calls the Nabathaeans Arabs, says that they wrote “Syriac.” Strabo calls the “Edomites” Nabathaeans, and the inhabitants of Galilee, Jericho, Philadelphia, and Samaria “a mixed race of Egyptians, Arabians, and Phoenicians” (Strabo, Section 34). Also, Diodorus speaks of “Nabathaean Arabia” as a distinct country (Diodorus, xvii.1.21). Josephus, and Jerome (in Quaestiones in Genesis 25:13) following him, include the whole country from the Euphrates to Egypt, and thus include some whose language was Aramaic.

2. Regarding the second point (Dusares): Dusares, though at first an Arab idol, was worshiped far and wide—in Galatia, Bostra, even Italy (see coins in Eckhel, Tanini, in Zoega, De Obeliscis, pp. 205-207, and Zoega himself, p. 205).

3. Regarding the third point (Arabic names of kings): The kings named by Josephus (see the list in Vincent’s Commerce, vol. ii, pp. 273-276)—Arethas, Malchus, Obodas—may be equally Aramaic, and Obodas has a more Aramaic sound. Anyway, the Nabathaeans, if placed in Petra by Nebuchadnezzar, were not conquerors and may have received an Arab king in the four centuries between Nebuchadnezzar and the first Aretas known at Petra. What changes those settled in Samaria underwent!

4. Regarding the fourth point (names of places):

   The names of places are not altered by a garrison in a capital. Our English names were not changed even by the Norman conquest, nor those of Samaria by the Assyrian. How many live on until now!

   Moreover, of the four names mentioned, none occurs until after the Christian era. There is nothing to connect them with the Nabathaeans. They may have been given before or long after them.

   Thus, these place names do not establish an Arabic origin for the Nabathaeans. In fact, the Nabathaeans were not of Arabic origin. They were inhabitants of Southern Mesopotamia and, according to the oldest evidence short of Holy Scripture, were the earliest inhabitants before the invasion of the Chaldaeans. Their country, Irak, “extended lengthways from Mosul or Nineveh to Aba dan, and in breadth from Cadesia to Hulvan.” Syrian writers claimed that theirs was the primeval language; Muslim writers, who deny this, admit that their language was Syriac.

A learned Syriac writer calls the three Chaldean names in Daniel—Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego—Nabathaean. The surviving words of their language are mostly Syriac. Muslim writers suppose them to be descended from Aram son of Shem.

Once they were a powerful nation with a highly cultivated language. One of their books, written before the destruction of Nineveh and Babylon, itself mentions an ancient literature, specifically on agriculture, medicine, botany, and that favorite study of the Chaldaeans, astrology: “the mysteries,” star-worship, and a very extensive, elaborate system of symbolic representation.

But the Chaldees conquered them; they were subjects of Nebuchadnezzar. It is in harmony with the later policy of the Eastern Monarchies to suppose that Nebuchadnezzar placed them in Petra to hold in check the revolted Idumaeans. (60 geographical miles from Petra).

Anyway, by 312 BC, Edom had long been expelled from his native mountains. He was not there about 420 BC, the age of Malachi.

Probably then, after the expulsion foretold by Obadiah, Edom never recovered his former possessions but continued his robber-life along the southern borders of Judah, unchanged by God’s punishment, the same deadly enemy of Judah.