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Index
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Index
The narrative:
1 The prophecy of Obadiah.
We have received tidings from the LORD,
And an envoy has been sent out among the nations:
“Up! Let us rise up against her for battle.”
Thus said my Lord GOD concerning Edom:
2 I will make you least among nations,
You shall be most despised.
3 Your arrogant heart has seduced you,
You who dwell in clefts of the rock,
In your lofty abode.
You think in your heart,
“Who can pull me down to earth?"
4 Should you nest as high as the eagle,
Should your eyrie be lodged among the stars,
Even from there I will pull you down
— declares the LORD.
5 If thieves were to come to you,
Marauders by night,
They would steal no more than they needed.
If vintagers came to you,
They would surely leave some gleanings.
How utterly you are destroyed!
6 How thoroughly rifled is Esau,
How ransacked his hoards!
7 All your allies turned you back
At the frontier;
Your own confederates
Have duped and overcome you;
[Those who ate] your bread
Have planted snares under you.
He is bereft of understanding.
8 In that day
— declares the LORD —
I will make the wise vanish from Edom,
Understanding from Esau's mount.
9 Your warriors shall lose heart, O Teman,
And not a man on Esau's mount
Shall survive the slaughter.
10 For the outrage to your brother Jacob,
Disgrace shall engulf you,
And you shall perish forever.
11 On that day when you stood aloof,
When aliens carried off his goods,
When foreigners entered his gates
And cast lots for Jerusalem,
You were as one of them.
12 How could you gaze with glee
On your brother that day,
On his day of calamity!
How could you gloat
Over the people of Judah
On that day of ruin!
How could you loudly jeer
On a day of anguish!
13 How could you enter the gate of My people
On its day of disaster,
Gaze in glee with the others
On its misfortune
On its day of disaster,
And lay hands on its wealth
On its day of disaster!
14 How could you stand at the passes
To cut down its fugitives!
How could you betray those who fled
On that day of anguish!
15 As you did, so shall it be done to you;
Your conduct shall be requited.
Yea, against all nations
The day of the LORD is at hand.
16 That same cup that you drank on My Holy Mount
Shall all nations drink evermore,
Drink till their speech grows thick,
And they become as though they had never been.
17 But on Zion's mount a remnant shall survive,
And it shall be holy.
The House of Jacob shall dispossess
Those who dispossessed them.
18 The House of Jacob shall be fire,
And the House of Joseph flame,
And the House of Esau shall be straw;
They shall burn it and devour it,
And no survivor shall be left of the House of Esau
— for the LORD has spoken.
19 Thus they shall possess the Negeb and Mount Esau as well, the Shephelah and Philistia. They shall possess the Ephraimite country and the district of Samaria, and Benjamin along with Gilead. 20 And that exiled force of Israelites [shall possess] what belongs to the Phoenicians as far as Zarephath, while the Jerusalemite exile community of Sepharad shall possess the towns of the Negeb. 21 For liberators shall march up on Mount Zion to wreak judgment on Mount Esau; and dominion shall be the LORD's. (Obadiah (Tanakh))
The House of Esau abused their brother Jacob - as described in the narrative. For this outrage against their brother they were arraigned, found guilty, and sentenced to [Spiritual] Death.
Within Covenant Law, the Esau Precedent is a binding legal precedent which must be followed in subsequent similar cases.
Jacob was accepted; Esau was rejected:
1 A pronouncement: The word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi.
2 I have shown you love, said the LORD. But you ask, “How have You shown us love?" After all—declares the LORD—Esau is Jacob's brother; yet I have accepted Jacob 3 and have rejected Esau. I have made his hills a desolation, his territorya home for beasts of the desert. 4 If Edom thinks, “Though crushed, we can build the ruins again," thus said the LORD of Hosts: They may build, but I will tear down. And so they shall be known as the region of wickedness, the people damned forever of the LORD. 5 Your eyes shall behold it, and you shall declare, “Great is the LORD beyond the borders of Israel!" (Malachi 1:1-5 (Tanakh))
[Essay: Am I my brother's keeper?]
The Esau Precedent will be applied to those relatives who commit similar atrocities against the Israelites. And so the Esau Precedent - together with its sentence of Death - will be applied to the adherents of Islam, since followers of Islam trace their lineage back to Ishmael.
[Critique: Islam - Isaac and Ishmael]
Isaac was accepted: the Covenant was to be maintained through Isaac and his Jewish wife Rebekah.
Ishmael was rejected, and had no part in the Covenant. His mother was Egyptian; and he was born out of Abraham and Sarai's disbelief and wrongdoing:
15 And God said to Abraham, “As for your wife Sarai, you shall not call her Sarai, but her name shall be Sarah. 16 I will bless her; indeed, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she shall give rise to nations; rulers of peoples shall issue from her.”
17 Abraham threw himself on his face and laughed, as he said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man a hundred years old, or can Sarah bear a child at ninety?" 18 And Abraham said to God, “O that Ishmael might live by Your favor!"
19 God said, “Nevertheless, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac; and I will maintain My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring to come. 20 As for Ishmael, I have heeded you. I hereby bless him. I will make him fertile and exceedingly numerous. He shall be the father of twelve chieftains, and I will make of him a great nation. 21 But My covenant I will maintain with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year.”
22 And when He was done speaking with him, God was gone from Abraham. (Genesis 17:15-22 (Tanakh))
2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Look, the LORD has kept me from bearing. Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a son through her.” And Abram heeded Sarai's request. 3 So Sarai, Abram's wife, took her maid, Hagar† the Egyptian — after Abram had dwelt in the land of Canaan ten years — and gave her to her husband Abram as concubine. (Genesis 16:2-3 (Tanakh))
[† Compare Hagar with Ruth, who converted to Judaism and became an ancestor of David.]
The relationship between the houses of Esau and Islam (descendants of Ishmael).
[Dissertation: The House of Islam fall within the scope of the binding Esau Precedent.]
[Dissertation (exhaustive): Islam's conduct today goes beyond outrage. What is Islam's future?]
Version: 2025-02-27