If thieves came to you, if plunderers came by night – how you have been destroyed! – would they not steal only enough for themselves?  If grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave gleanings?  How Esau has been pillaged, his treasures sought out!  All your allies have driven you to your border; those at peace with you have deceived you; they have prevailed against you; those who eat your bread have set a trap beneath you – you have no understanding.

Obadiah 5-7

While prophesying of Edom’s upcoming downfall, the Lord inspired Obadiah (and Jeremiah in Jeremiah 49:9-10, leading some to conclude that the two prophets were contemporaries) to compare what God would take from Edom to how thieves plunder a house. This reminds me of how my wife’s grandparents had come home one night to find that thieves had broken into their home and had stolen many things.  They took pictures of how the robbers had left their living room.  In addition to seeing the empty places where the television, VCR, and more possessions had been before they were stolen, one could see how small pieces of furniture had been overturned and drawers had pulled out and their contents thrown all over the floor in the thieves’ efforts to find whatever they could quickly carry off.

Generally, those who commit B&E in the middle of the night will steal only what they can carry (5a).  Likewise, reapers of vineyards generally leave a few gleanings on the ground after they depart, grapes which had slipped between their fingers as they were plucking them from the vine and putting them into their bags (5c).  Thieves rarely strip a house clean of all its possessions; reapers likely have never taken every single grape from a vineyard.  Yet that would not be the case with Edom.  Their own allies and trading partners – Homer Hailey supposes the Moabites, Ammonites, traders of nearby Arabian tribes, or perhaps the inhabitants of Gaza and Tyre with whom the Edomites partnered in slave trafficking (Amos 1:6, 9) – would be the ones who would turn on them (7a) and search for all of their wealth until they had taken all of it (6; cf. Jer. 49:10).

(As a sidenote, the insertion of “how you have been destroyed!” [5b] in the middle of the sentence about thieves stealing only enough for themselves seems like something one would say off the cuff while engaged in a normal conversation or speech.  It is normal to, while talking to others, interrupt oneself to insert into a sentence a relevant point which has just sprung to mind.  [Example: “I need to tell you – oh, you’re going to love this! – about the funny thing I saw yesterday.”]  It makes me ponder whether the book is a divinely inspired transcript of a public condemnation of Edom given orally by Obadiah either to the nation of Israel or possibly to the Edomites themselves within their home country.)

Edom would “have no understanding” of what was happening to them (7b).  They would likely be at a loss as to what to do next when they saw that their supposed allies were turning against them.  Their ruler’s trusted advisors and those who would be highly ranked in their military would have no idea how to find a way forward to any outcome except slaughterous defeat, all as Obadiah foretold (8-9).  Even more so, Edom likely would not realize that their demise ultimately was because of the power and will of Almighty God, who lay the blame at his own feet when he said, “But I have stripped Esau (another name for Edom since the Edomites are Esau’s descendants – Gen. 36) bare; I have uncovered his hiding places…” (Jer. 49:10).  They had been naively prideful, thinking no one could conquer them (3).  Finding that they were mistaken would be incomprehensible to them.

Our wise Lord warns us, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18), “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12), and “Before destruction a man’s heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor” (Prov. 18:12).  May we take these lessons to heart.

— Jon