ProlepsisOpen in the graph →

Prophecy

Edom reduced, then erased as a people (Obadiah, Jeremiah 49, Ezekiel 25)

The tell of Bozrah (Busayra, Jordan), a former Edomite administrative center abandoned after the Persian period.
Archaeological object The tell of Bozrah (Busayra, Jordan), a former Edomite administrative center abandoned after the Persian period. — Bashar Tabbah, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

◐ Written shortly before or at the time: it cannot be decided

Written c. 850–585 BC according to tradition; c. 586–450 BC according to historians. Event: c. 553 BC – 70 AD.

See the full entry: sources, objections, answers

In short

The announcement. The prophets Obadiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, around 586 BC (Obadiah perhaps much earlier according to tradition), announce that the people of Edom, Israel's neighbor, will be brought low and then erased, and that “nothing will remain of the house of Esau”.

What happened. Around 553 BC, the Babylonian king Nabonidus subdues Edom. The Edomites fall back to the south of Judea, are subdued by the Jewish ruler John Hyrcanus around 125 BC, then disappear from the sources as a people after AD 70. Their former territory, however, did not remain empty: the Nabataean city of Petra long prospered there.

What is still debated. all the small neighboring kingdoms disappeared in the same way at that time, and the announcement of a land “never inhabited again” did not prove true.

What would be striking if the text came first

Judah, deported in 586, recovered, whereas Edom ceased to exist as a people, under the blows of the two agents the texts name. The exact date of the oracles remains debated, and the region itself did not remain empty.

Main objection (in French for now)

La disparition d’Édom est un phénomène général : Moab, Ammon et les cités philistines ont disparu de la même façon sous les empires babylonien, perse et hellénistique. Annoncer la ruine d’un petit royaume voisin au VIe siècle n’exigeait aucune prescience.

The text (World English Bible)

The vision of Obadiah. This is what the Lord GOD says about Edom. We have heard news from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among the nations, saying, “Arise, and let’s rise up against her in battle. Behold, I have made you small among the nations. You are greatly despised. The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high, who says in his heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?’ Though you mount on high as the eagle, and though your nest is set among the stars, I will bring you down from there,” says the LORD.

Obad 1:1-4

For the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame will cover you, and you will be cut off forever.

Obad 1:10

The house of Jacob will be a fire, the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble. They will burn among them and devour them. There will not be any remaining to the house of Esau.” Indeed, the LORD has spoken.

Obad 1:18

Sources