Obadiah, the shortest book in the Old Testament canon, the work of one of the twelve 'minor prophets,' of whose personality absolutely nothing is known. The name is not uncommon, meaning 'servant of Jehovah,' and was borne by the devout chamberlain of Ahab (1 Kings, xviii. 3-16), who protected the prophets of the Lord from the fury of Jezebel. Delitzsch thinks the author of the prophecy may have been identical with the Obadiah mentioned in 2 Chron. xvii. 7, as one of the Levites sent by Jehosaphat to teach the law in the cities of Judah. From internal evidence the date of composition of the book may, with much probability, be put shortly after the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, about 587 B.C. The book was placed next to Amos merely because the prophecy of doom upon Edom is an amplification of that pronounced earlier by Amos (Amos, ix. 12). This passage in Obadiah (verses 1-9) is closely parallel to Jeremiah, xlix. 7-22, from which indeed Knobel, Bleek, and Reuss think it directly borrowed. Ewald maintained that the first seven verses of Obadiah were written by a prophet of that name during the inroads of Rezin and Pekah, that the eleventh refers to the capture of Jerusalem by the Arabs and Philistines in the reign of Jehoram, and that the remaining verses were compiled by a later writer, partly from the older prophet (who was also used by Jeremiah), and partly from other sources. Caspari offers strong reasons for his statement that the words of Obadiah were modified and expanded by Jeremiah. Some scholars again, as Keil, have supposed unnecessarily that Joel, ii. 32, is a distinct reference to Obadiah 17. The book of Obadiah possesses high individuality of style, and contains some peculiar words. It has ever been favourite reading among the Jews, and it was from it that they derived the name of 'Edom' as applied to Rome, to Christians, and all their enemies. The book falls naturally into two well-marked divisions, of which the first (1-16) denounces destruction to Edom, and the second (17-21) prophecies the restoration of Israel.
See the commentaries on the prophet by Ewald, Orelli, Hitzig, Keil and Delitzsch, and Pusey; the books on Hebrew prophecy by Kuenen (Eng. trans. 1877), Robertson Smith (1882), Duhm (1875); also the special commentaries by Hendewerk (1836) and Caspari (Leip. 1842); Archdeacon Perowne in the 'Cambridge Bible for Schools' (1883), and Farrar's Minor Prophets (1890).