Albert Barnes Commentary Obadiah 1:9

"And thy mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one may be cut off from the mount of Esau by slaughter." — Obadiah 1:9 (ASV)

And your mighty, O Teman, shall be dismayed—The pagan, more religiously than we, ascribed panic to the immediate action of one of their gods, or to Nature deified, Pan (i.e., the Universe). They were wrong as to the being whom they “ignorantly worshiped”; right, however, in ascribing it to what they thought a divine agency.

Holy Scripture at times reveals the hidden agency, so that we may acknowledge God’s Hand in those terrors for which we cannot account. So it records that, on the occasion of Jonathan’s slaughter of the Philistine garrison (1 Samuel 14:15), there was a trembling in the host and in the field, and among all the people: the garrison and the spoilers, they also trembled, and the earth quaked, so it became a trembling from God—or, in our common word, a panic from God.

All then failed Edom. Their allies and friends betrayed them; God took away their wisdom. Wisdom was turned into witlessness, and courage into cowardice, to the end that everyone from Mount Esau may be cut off by slaughter. The prophet sums up briefly God’s purpose in all this. The immediate means were human treachery, human violence, the failure of wisdom in the wise, and of courage in the brave. The purpose of all, in God’s will, was their destruction (Romans 8:28).

By slaughter—literally “from slaughter,” may mean either the immediate or the distant cause of their being “cut off”; either the means which God employed (for All things work together for good to those who love God, and for evil to those who hate Him), so that Edom was cut off by one great slaughter by the enemy; or that which moved God to give them over to destruction, their own “slaughter” of their brethren, the Jews, as it follows.