THIS is the shortest of all the books of the Old

Testament, the least of those tribes, and yet is not to be passed by,

or thought meanly of, for this penny has Cæsar’s image and

superscription upon it; it is stamped with a divine authority. There

may appear much of God in a short sermon, in a little book; and much

good may be done by it, multum in parvo–much in a little. Mr.

Norris says, “If angels were to write books, we should have few

folios.” That may be very precious which is not voluminous. This book

is entitled, The Vision of Obadiah. Who this Obadiah was does

not appear from any other scripture. Some of the ancients imagined him

to be the same with that Obadiah that was steward to Ahab’s household

(1 Kings xviii. 3);

and, if so, he that hid and fed the prophets had indeed a prophet’s

reward, when he was himself made a prophet. But that is a conjecture

which has no ground. This Obadiah, it is probable, was of a later date,

some think contemporary with Hosea, Joel, and Amos; others think he

lived about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, when the children

of Edom so barbarously triumphed in that destruction. However, what he

wrote was what he saw; it is his vision. Probably there was much

more which he was divinely inspired to speak, but this is all he was

inspired to write; and all he writes is concerning Edom. It is a

foolish fancy of some of the Jews that because he prophesies only

concerning Edom he was himself an Edomite by birth, but a proselyte to

the Jewish religion. Other prophets prophesied against Edom, and some

of them seem to have borrowed from him in their predictions against

Edom, as

Jer. xlix. 7, &c. Ezek. xxv. 12,

&c. Out of the mouth of these two or three witnesses every word will be

established.