Obadiah 1:1-21 AMPC

[1] The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord God concerning Edom: We have heard tidings from the Lord, and an ambassador is sent forth among the nations [saying], Arise, and let us rise up against [Edom] for battle! [2] Behold, I will make you small among the nations [Edom]; you shall be despised exceedingly. [3] The pride of your heart has deceived you, you dweller in the refuges of the rock [Petra, Edom's capital], whose habitation is high, who says in his heart, Who can bring me down to the ground? [4] Though you mount on high as the eagle and though you set your nest among the stars, I will bring you down from there, says the Lord. [5] If thieves came to you, if robbers by night-how you are brought to nothing!-would they not steal only enough for themselves? If grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave some grapes for gleaning? [But this ravaging was done by God, not men.] [6] How are the things of Esau [Edom] searched out! How are his hidden treasures sought out! [7] All the men of your confederacy (your allies) have brought you on your way, even to the border; the men who were at peace with you have deceived you and prevailed against you; they who eat your bread have laid a snare under you. There is no understanding [in Edom, or] of it. [8] Will not I in that day, says the Lord, destroy the wise men out of Edom and [men of] understanding out of Mount Esau [Idumea, a mountainous region]? [9] And your mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that everyone from Mount Esau will be cut off by slaughter. [10] For the violence you did against your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever. [11] On the day that you stood aloof [from your brother Jacob]-on the day that strangers took captive his forces and carried off his wealth, and foreigners entered into his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem-you were even as one of them. [12] But you should not have gloated over your brother's day, the day when his misfortune came and he was made a stranger; you should not have rejoiced over the sons of Judah in the day of their ruin; you should not have spoken arrogantly in the day of their distress. [13] You should not have entered the gate of My people in the day of their calamity and ruin; yes, you should not have looked [with delight] on their misery in the day of their calamity and ruin, and not have reached after their army and their possessions in the day of their calamity and ruin. [14] And you should not have stood at the crossway to cut off those of Judah who escaped, neither should you have delivered up those [of Judah] who remained in the day of distress. [15] For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done to you; your dealings will return upon your own head. [16] For as you [Edom] have drunk upon the mountain of My holiness [desecrating it in the wild revelry of the destroyers], so shall all the nations drink continually [in turn, of My wrath]; yes, they shall drink, talk foolishly, and swallow down [the full measure of punishment] and they shall be [destroyed] as though they had not been. [17] But on Mount Zion [in Jerusalem] there shall be deliverance [for those who escape], and it shall be holy; and the house of Jacob shall possess its [own former] possessions. [18] The house of Jacob shall be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame, but the house of Esau shall be stubble; they shall kindle and burn them and consume them, and there shall be no survivor of the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken it. [19] They of the South (the Negeb) shall possess Mount Esau, and they of the lowland the land of the Philistines; they shall possess the land of Ephraim and the fields of Samaria, and Benjamin shall possess Gilead [across the Jordan River]. [20] And the exiles of this host of the children of Israel who are among the Canaanites shall possess [Phoenicia] as far as Zarephath, and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad shall possess the cities of the South (the Negeb). [21] And deliverers shall go up on Mount Zion to rule and judge Mount Esau, and the kingdom and the kingship shall be the Lord's.