Obadiah 1:17 - Meaning and Application

After the destruction of the church’s enemies has been announced, and that destruction will be fully carried out in the great day of judgment, these verses turn to precious promises of salvation for the church. That is how this prophecy ends, just as Joel’s and Amos’s prophecies do. Some of this was partly fulfilled when the Jews returned from Babylon, even though Edom seemed to triumph over them during their captivity, as if that defeat would never end. Still, the full and final fulfillment belongs to the great salvation won by Jesus Christ, to which all the prophets testified.

It is promised here, first, that there will be salvation on Mount Zion, that holy hill where God has set his anointed King (Psalm 2:6). “On Mount Zion there will be deliverance” (Obadiah 1:17). There will be those who escape, as the margin says. A remnant of Israel will be saved on the holy mountain (Obadiah 1:16). Christ said, “Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). God’s deliverances for the Jews were signs of our redemption through Christ.

But Mount Zion also points to the gospel church, from which the New Testament way of life went out (Isaiah 2:3). There salvation is preached and prayed for. To the gospel church are added those who will be saved, and for those who come in faith and hope to this Mount Zion, deliverance is worked from wrath, the curse, sin, death, and hell, while those who stay far away are left to perish.

Second, wherever there is salvation, there will also be holiness to prepare and fit the children of Zion for that deliverance. Where God plans to give glory, he also gives grace. Earthly rescues are merciful to us when holiness comes with them, because then we are made ready to receive them with love and thanks to God. When we are made holy, even those deliverances are holy to us. Holiness itself is a great rescue, and it is a sign of the eternal salvation we wait for.

There, on Mount Zion, in the gospel church, there will be holiness. That is what fits God’s house forever, and the great purpose of the gospel is to plant and grow holiness. There the Holy Spirit will be present, along with holy ordinances, holy Jesus, and a chosen remnant of holy souls, among whom the holy God will be pleased to dwell. Note this well, where there is holiness, there will be deliverance.

Third, this salvation and holiness will spread, grow, and gain ground in the world. “The house of Jacob,” even this Mount Zion with the deliverance and holiness worked there, “shall possess their possessions” (Obadiah 1:17). That means the gospel church will be planted among the nations and fill the earth. The apostles of Christ, by their preaching, will win people’s hearts for him, since they are his messengers and ministers. When they gain people’s hearts, they gain their possessions too, because those who give themselves to the Lord also give all they have to him. When Lydia’s heart was opened to Christ, her house was opened to his ministers.

When the Gentile nations became people who were saved, taught, walked in the Lord’s light, and brought their glory and honor into the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:24), then the house of Jacob possessed their possessions. This began to be fulfilled when the Christian religion was planted in the world, and it will be fulfilled more and more as Christ’s throne is set up where Satan’s seat is, and as trophies of Christ’s victory are raised over the ruins of the devil’s kingdom.

Now the prophecy shows how this possession will be gained and how all resistance will be overcome (Obadiah 1:18). “The house of Jacob will be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame,” because their God is, and will be, a consuming fire. “The house of Esau will be stubble,” easily burned up by this fire. This is fulfilled in two ways.

First, it appears in the conversion of many by the grace of Christ. The gospel, preached in the house of Jacob and Joseph and openly received there, will be like fire and flame. It softens hard hearts and burns away the waste and dirt of sin and corruption, so that people may be purified and refined by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning. When Christ comes, he will be like a refiner’s fire (Malachi 3:1-2).

Second, it appears in the shame and downfall of all stubborn, unrepentant enemies of the gospel of Christ, who oppose it and try to stop the kingdom of the Messiah from being established. The gospel day is like a day that burns as hot as an oven, and all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble (Malachi 4:1). Jacob and Joseph will be like fire and flame, and anyone who tries to harm them will do so at great risk. They will be like a torch of fire in a sheaf (Zechariah 12:6).

God’s word in the mouths of his ministers is also called fire, and the people are like wood to be consumed by it (Jeremiah 5:14). The man of sin, that is, the wicked power opposed to Christ, will be destroyed by the breath of Christ’s mouth (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Those who are not refined like gold by the fire of the gospel will be consumed like dross by it, for it will be a fragrance of either life or death. When idols and idolatry were destroyed, and the wealth and power of nations were brought into the service of Christ and his gospel, and when the spoils of the strong man armed were taken by one stronger than he, then the house of Jacob and Joseph devoured the house of Esau, so that none of it remained. The Lord spoke this by his prophets, and he carried it out by his apostles.

Finally, the prophecy tells how far this possession will reach (Obadiah 1:19-20). It uses Jewish language, speaking of the added land of Israel after the return from Babylon. The exiles of this host of Israel, that is, this people long held in captivity and now brought back, are still called the children of the captivity. They will not only recover their own land, but also gain ground on the lands next to them. Some of their neighbors will become converts and join with the Jews, and by bringing them into holy fellowship, they will in a sense possess their land.

We should count it true wealth when our neighbors are converted to the fear of God and the faith of Christ, and when they join us in worshiping God. Such an increase in Christian fellowship should matter more to us than an increase in our property. Or, if we look at it another way, the old inhabitants of those lands were carried away into captivity and never returned to their estates. Then the children of Israel would take possession of what lay next to them, because their numbers would grow so much that their own land would become too small. Their neighbors’ estates would then pass to them through lack of heirs. They would enter into what was adjoining them. The country of Esau would be taken by those in the southern parts of Canaan, since it lay next to them.

Those who live in the plain, west of Canaan, a flat farming region, will take the land of the Philistines, their neighbors. The people of Judah, the chief of the two returning tribes, will take the field of Ephraim and Samaria, which had belonged to the ten tribes. Benjamin, the other tribe, will take Gilead east of the Jordan, which had belonged to the two and a half tribes.

So the kingdom of Israel will join with the kingdom of Judah in both civil and religious life. As friends and brothers, they will share in one another’s blessings. Together they will also take the land of the Canaanites, as far as Zarephath near Sidon, and Jerusalem will take the cities of the south, as far as Sepharad. In this way, the Jews would expand on every side.

Modern rabbis teach their students to take Zarephath and Sepharad as France and Spain. On that basis, they make the foolish and baseless claim that one day the Jews will rule those countries. They also call Christians Edomites, as if they are the people over whom the Jews will rule. But the promise here almost certainly has a spiritual meaning. It was fulfilled in the setting up of the Christian church, the gospel Israel, in the world. It will be fulfilled more and more as the church grows and more people are added to it, until the whole body of Christ is complete.

When ministers and Christians bring their neighbors to Christ and lead them to submit to the Lord, they are taking possession of them in this sense. The believers Abraham had are called the souls he had gained, (Genesis 12:5). This kind of possession is not gained by force and violence, for the weapons of our warfare are not physical but spiritual. It is gained through preaching the gospel, with the power of God’s grace working through it.

The kingdom of the Redeemer will be set up and kept in place, bringing comfort to his loyal subjects and fear and shame to all his enemies. “The kingdom shall be the Lord’s,” the Lord Christ’s, as Obadiah says in verse 21. God gives it to him by placing all things in his hand, with all authority in heaven and on earth. People also give it to him when they yield themselves to him as willing subjects and accept him as their head.

The work of kings is to protect their people and put down their enemies, and Christ will do both. He will reward and punish. Mount Zion will be saved. On it will come saviors, the preachers of the gospel, who are called saviors because their work is to save both themselves and those who hear them. In this they work with Christ, though they can do nothing unless he works with them by his grace.

Mount Esau will be judged. The same men who come as saviors on Mount Zion will also judge Mount Esau, because the gospel in their mouths saves believers and condemns unbelievers. Christ’s ministers are saviors on Mount Zion when they preach, “Whoever believes shall be saved,” but they judge Mount Esau when they preach, “Whoever does not believe will be condemned,” which they are not only allowed, but commanded, to do (Mark 16:16).

God’s providence also fulfills this in history. When God raises up friends for the church in times of trouble, as he once raised up judges to deliver Israel (Judges 2:16), then saviors come to Mount Zion to keep it from sinking and ruin. When the enemies of the church are brought low and their power is broken, then Mount Esau is judged. God will do this in every age in the way he knows is best. We can trust that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, but the church will prevail against them. The kingdom will be the Lord’s. The kingdoms of the world will become his, and he has taken, and will take, his great power and reign.