“Disloyalty for Disloyalty: A Study of Obadiah 7”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17162/rt.v34i1.1317Abstract
Obadiah 7 describes a broken international treaty. Who are the ones who break their
international treaty with Edom? The identity of these allies is uncertain, but it has been suggested that they could be the Babylonians, Arab
tribes, or Nabataeans. These anonymous allies in the text would have
been easily identified by the first hearers and readers of the oracle since,
at that time, Edom had a treaty of peace and cooperation with Babylon.
Within only a few more decades this treaty was broken under the leadership of Nabonidus, when the Babylonian army and vassal states attacked
Edom. The Edomites underestimated the possibility of any such attack
from their Babylonian “friend” and had an excessive confidence in their
geographic location (v. 3). The Babylonian army and their vassal states
are those who would sack all of the riches of Edom (v. 6) and would kill
their soldiers (v. 9). These are the ones who would lay traps, deceive,
subjugate, and push Edom to their borders (v. 7).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
- The authors retain their copyright but assign to the journal the right of the first publication, with the work registered under the Creative Commons attribution non commercial (CC BY NC) license, which allows third parties to use the published information for non commercial purposes as long as they mention the authorship of the work and that it was first published in this journal.
- Authors may make other independent or additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (eg, include it in an institutional repository or publish it in a book) as long as it clearly indicates that the work was first published in this journal.
- Authors are encouraged and advised to publish their work on the Internet (for example, on institutional or personal pages) before and during the review and publication process, as it can lead to productive exchanges and a greater and faster dissemination of the published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
