The Bible

 

Obadiah 1

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1 Thus said the Lord Jehovah to Edom, A report we have heard from Jehovah, And an ambassador among nations was sent, `Rise, yea, let us Rise against her for battle.'

2 Lo, little I have made thee among nations, Despised [art] thou exceedingly.

3 The pride of thy heart hath lifted thee up, O dweller in clifts of a rock, (A high place [is] his habitation, He is saying in his heart, `Who doth bring me down [to] earth?')

4 If thou dost go up high as an eagle, And if between stars thou dost set thy nest, From thence I bring thee down, An affirmation of Jehovah.

5 If thieves have come in to thee, If spoilers of the night, How hast thou been cut off! Do they not steal their sufficiency? If gatherers have come in to thee, Do they not leave gleanings?

6 How hath Esau been searched out! Flowed out have his hidden things,

7 Unto the border sent thee have all thine allies, Forgotten thee, prevailed over thee, have thy friends, Thy bread they make a snare under thee, There is no understanding in him!

8 Is it not in that day -- an affirmation of Jehovah, That I have destroyed the wise out of Edom, And understanding out of the mount of Esau?

9 And broken down have been thy mighty ones, O Teman, So that every one of the mount of Esau is cut off.

10 For slaughter, for violence [to] thy brother Jacob, Cover thee doth shame, And thou hast been cut off -- to the age.

11 In the day of thy standing over-against, In the day of strangers taking captive his force, And foreigners have entered his gates, And for Jerusalem have cast a lot, Even thou [art] as one of them!

12 And -- thou dost not look on the day of thy brother, On the day of his alienation, Nor dost thou rejoice over sons of Judah, In the day of their destruction, Nor make great thy mouth in a day of distress.

13 Nor come into a gate of My people in a day of their calamity, Nor look, even thou, on its misfortune in a day of its calamity, Nor send forth against its force in a day of its calamity,

14 Nor stand by the breach to cut off its escaped, Nor deliver up its remnant in a day of distress.

15 For near [is] the day of Jehovah, on all the nations, As thou hast done, it is done to thee, Thy deed doth turn back on thine own head.

16 For -- as ye have drunk on My holy mount, Drink do all the nations continually, And they have drunk and have swallowed, And they have been as they have not been.

17 And in mount Zion there is an escape, And it hath been holy, And the house of Jacob have possessed their possessions.

18 And the house of Jacob hath been a fire, And the house of Joseph a flame, And the house of Esau for stubble, And they have burned among them, And they have consumed them, And there is not a remnant to the house of Esau, For Jehovah hath spoken.

19 And they have possessed the south with the mount of Esau, And the low country with the Philistines, And they have possessed the field of Ephraim, And the field of Samaria, And Benjamin with Gilead.

20 And the removed of this force of the sons of Israel, That [is with] the Canaanites unto Zarephat, And the removed of Jerusalem that [is] with the Sepharad, Possess the cities of the south.

21 And gone up have saviours on mount Zion, To judge the mount of Esau, And the kingdom hath been to Jehovah!'

Commentary

 

Night

  

The sun in the Bible represents the Lord, with its heat representing His love and its light representing His wisdom. “Daytime,” then, represents a state in which we are turned toward the Lord, receiving His love and being enlightened by His truth. And “nighttime,” obviously, represents states in which we are turned away from the Lord, left cold and blind to the truth. The most common word used for it in the New Christian theology is “obscurity.” The darkness is not absolute, of course. The light of the moon represents the understanding we can have based on facts and our own intelligence. But while the moon reflects some of the sun's light, it offers almost no heat, so this kind of understanding is a cold one, without the warmth of love. And at its darkest and coldest, night represents a state of judgment. This happens when a person -- or a church -- becomes so mired in evil and falsity that there is no light or heat. The Lord can then step in, separate the good from the evil, consign the evil to hell and begin rebuilding based on the remnant that is still good. Drastic as that sounds, it is something that we all go through repeatedly in various aspects of our loves, so that we can be rid of what is evil and let the Lord rebuild us as angels.