As we come down to the last couple of weeks of our Bible study there’s a kind of subtle shift in the messages we’re going to hear. Up to now, the prophecies we’ve looked at have tended to be either from just before the Jewish exile to Babylon, or from the period of the exile, reflecting the experience of terror in the former and despair in the latter. We started a bit of a shift out of that feeling a couple of weeks ago when we looked at apocalyptic prophecy, and today we’re moving to the end of the exile and what message the prophets are giving about what God will be able to do for the people. I asked you to read two prophecies for this week: a famous passage from the Book of Ezekiel that we’ll get to in a few minutes, and a very obscure prophecy known as the prophecy of Obadiah, and I want to begin my comments tonight with Obadiah.
Obadiah is probably most noteworthy for being the shortest book by far in the Old Testament. It’s so short that it couldn’t be divided into chapters - so there’s no Obadiah 1. There’s just Obadiah, divided into 21 verses. This makes it the 3rd shortest book in the entire Bible. 2 and 3 John both have fewer verses than Obadiah, and Philemon and Jude are also not divided into chapters, but they’re just a little bit longer than Obadiah. So Obadiah is a very short book, and that leads fairly simply into the question of why such a short prophecy was even recognized as Scripture in the first place. When Obadiah is placed against Isaiah or Jeremiah, or even prophets like Micah or Zechariah it seems rather unimportant. It doesn’t tell a memorable story like Jonah. What was the point of including it? Why was this tiny prophecy even noticed by people? These are some interesting questions. Over the years I’ve paid very little attention to Obadiah myself. It’s actually quite possible that the last time I read the prophecy before beginning my reading on it for this week was when I was in Emmanuel College in the early 1990’s and I took a course on Old Testament prophecy. Really, this book just doesn’t come naturally into our thoughts and I don’t think it’s even fair to say that we ignore it - we just don’t think about it. But having done some research on it, I’ve actually found it to be quite a fascinating book and I do want to make some points about it that eventually fall into the category of “New Life & Hope” as our title for this week suggests.
First - who was Obadiah? The truth is that we know almost nothing about Obadiah. The prophecy opens with the words “The vision of Obadiah” - and that’s it. That is the one and only time Obadiah is mentioned not only in his own prophecy but in the entire Bible. There’s no mention of his background, and there are no historical markers included, in the way that many of the prophets are dated by reference to the reigning kings of Israel or Judah. So it’s difficult to date the prophecy with any precision. Verses 10-14 seem to be looking back in time to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and the content of verses 15-21 seem to be very hopeful in tone, so it’s most likely that Obadiah was written near the end of the exile, or perhaps even in the early days after the exile had ended. We do know what Obadiah’s name means. It means, literally, “servant (or slave) of God.” There’s even an Arabic equivalent of the name Obadiah - “Abdullah” (which means the same thing.) One thing to keep in mind is that the “iah” at the end of a Hebrew name means “God” - just as the “lah” at the end of an Arabic name means “God.” And that is all that we know about Obadiah. So what’s noteworthy about his prophecy?
We need to focus on the fact that the prophecy is directed against “Edom.” Not Assyria or Babylon, but Edom. This isn’t the only time in Scripture that Edom is prophesied against. Edom is mentioned several times by seven of the other Old Testament prophecies. But those references to Edom tend to be isolated references to Edom along with references to other nations of the area. Obadiah’s prophecy is specifically directed at Edom, which makes it unique. So the next question then is - who is Edom? This, to me, is the most interesting part of Obadiah’s prophecy. Edom is another name for Jacob’s brother Esau. The first reference to that is in Genesis 25: “Esau said to Jacob, ‘Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished.’ (Therefore, he was called Edom.’)” To make a long story short, Esau and Jacob were brothers. They were the children of Isaac and Rebekah and the grandsons of Abraham and Sarah. They were competitive from the beginning - you might remember the story of Esau emerging from Rebekah’s womb with Jacob clutching at his heel. As the first born, Esau is the legitimate heir of Isaac, but Jacob tricks his father and essentially steals Isaac’s blessing from Esau, making Jacob the ancestor of God’s people - so Jacob’s name gets changed to “Israel” and from there the Jewish nation descends, while Esau goes off to live in the wilderness, angry and forlorn that his blessing was stolen. Based on the stories of the Old Testament, while Esau and Jacob themselves reconciled in later years, their descendants seem to have remained competitive and antagonistic and Edom and Israel become rival nations - not among the superpowers of the region, but rival nations.
Since Obadiah’s prophecy leads up to the memory of the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, it seems that Obadiah is rather subtly and skillfully weaving one of the foundational stories of the Jewish nation into the story of how the Jewish nation was eventually conquered. The basic message seems to have been: it wasn’t our fault; it was Edom’s!
The history of Edom is a bit of a mystery. Over the centuries there’s even been speculation that Edom never existed as a nation, but archaeologists are basically in agreement today that it did. Its territory seems to have been to the south of what would become Judah, so it’s in a desert area. The Old Testament mentions Israel defeating Edom in battle under both King Saul and King David, and it seems that for a while Edom became essentially a vassal state of Israel, and later, of Judah after the kingdom divided. The bitterness Obadiah expresses toward Edom is believed to stem from Edom taking its revenge on Israel and Judah by allying themselves with Babylon and participating in the siege and plunder of Jerusalem as the city fell, which explains why Edom gets mentioned in prophecy from time to time. What’s unusual about Obadiah, as I said, is that he makes Edom the sole target of the prophecy. But there are a lot of contemptuous references to Edom scattered throughout the Old Testament (even in the Psalms) which is a reminder that family feuds have long-lasting consequences. We don’t know much about Edom or what happened to it in the end. It seems to have disappeared as a nation - most likely occupied by the Babylonians - but we do know that some Edomites continued to be noteworthy figures. If you’ve ever wondered why the Herodian dynasty of Jesus’ day was so despised, it’s because its founder Antipater (the father of Herod the Great, who was on the throne when Jesus was born) was an Edomite, and so he and his descendants were seen as completely illegitimate.
Obadiah includes a series of “you should not have …” statements describing Edom’s wrongdoings and Obadiah lets go of any rivalry between Israel and Judah - Edom has wronged them both! “But you should not have gloated over your brother” (Jacob, or Israel) “on the day of his misfortune; you should not have rejoiced over the people of Judah on the day of their ruin …” So, again, there’s a sense that Edom was somehow allied with Babylon. And, with the exile ended (or coming to an end) Edom is doomed - and this is the hope for the Jewish nation: “The house of Jacob shall be a fire, the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau stubble; they shall burn them and consume them, and there shall be no survivor of the house of Esau; for the Lord has spoken.” The prophecy ends by noting that Jacob’s descendants will take possession of Edom’s lands, and finally ends on a triumphant note: “Those who have been saved shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.” Obadiah in the course of 21 verses very skillfully brings the history of the nation full circle - from its beginning in the person of Jacob to its exile in Babylon to its eventual salvation!
I do want to talk about Ezekiel briefly. We’ve already talked about Ezekiel as a person when we looked at another passage of the prophecy a few weeks ago, so I’m not going to repeat material about his background except to remind you that Ezekiel was a priest, he was from Judah and he wrote in the first person, so this is likely his writing rather than someone else writing down his experiences. Ezekiel’s prophecy includes a lot of very detailed and very graphic visions, and what we’re looking at this week is probably the best known of these visions: the valley of dry bones. And they were very dry bones.
In many ways the story is very simple. Ezekiel has a vision of these dry bones in a valley, and God seems to issue almost a test of Ezekiel’s faith: “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel tries to dodge the issue essentially: “O Lord God, you know.” Which is, of course, another way of saying “I don’t know.” And the vision then proceeds with God instructing Ezekiel to prophesy over the dry bones, and bit by bit the dry bones come to life: “as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’’ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.” And then God reveals the meaning of the vision: “... these bones are the whole house of Israel.” “House” is an important word - because it refers to the entire nation; not the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, but the one nation of Israel.
It’s significant that Ezekiel is writing in the early days of the exile. The point is that even in those early days, it hadn’t gone unnoticed that God could overcome whatever hardship the people might face. “They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, we are cut off completely.” These words give you the sense of a people in terrible despair (which likely reflects the feeling of the exiles when Ezekiel had his vision) but they’re immediately followed by this: “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.” So, even when things seem on the surface to be hopeless and at their most bleak, the hope given by God to the people through the prophets is that ultimately victory is assured. The people will persevere; they will triumph; they will be revived. This text appears in the lectionary for three occasions: the Fifth Sunday of Lent (so the Sunday before Palm Sunday), for the Easter Vigil for those churches that have an Easter vigil service and on the Day of Pentecost. The Pentecost connection comes from the reference to God’s Spirit so it looks at the story from a different perspective, but the Lenten reference and the passage’s use during the Easter vigil suggests a tie with the resurrection of Jesus. That’s out of context. This is not a prophecy of the resurrection - the resurrection of Jesus or of anyone else. It’s a vision meant to say to God’s people that even while their nation appears conquered and defeated and in despair; even when the situation seems hopeless; even when it seems that Israel has been wiped from the earth forever - God will bring life back to them. “‘I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,’ says the Lord.” In other words, God’s message to his people even during the darkest and bleakest early years of the early exile was, simply - “It will be all right. Everything will work out. Just stay the course.”
The story of “Dry Bones” has become a popular story in recent decades because of the decline in the size and power and influence of the church. It’s used very commonly in United Church circles. Our denomination is going through tough times. Our membership and attendance have been declining since the mid-1960’s and, as we’re often told, we’re closing an average of one congregation per week for the last several years. It’s easy to start to think that there’s no way forward; no way to stop the decline. The challenges so many churches (including our own) have faced because of the pandemic can sap us of both hope and strength and make us tempted to give up; to believe that there’s no way for us to recover or rebuild. When we look at this passage in the light of our own challenges, we may be taking the passage quite out of context as well, but there is nevertheless a relevance to the message. Whenever God’s people find themselves in a situation where there seems to be no hope; no escape - we have to remember that God is with us, and that God can bring forth new life even when new life seems impossible. “‘I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live …,’ says the Lord.” God’s people always need to remember those words.
Comments
Post a Comment