While Obadiah anticipates Edom's punishment, Malachi 1:2-5 presents Edom's punishment as underway. In Malachi 1:2-5, the prophet's disputation uses Edom's devastation as proof to Israel of God's love. The Malachi passage alludes to Obadiah in the process of conveying this message, thereby confirming that Obadiah's message of judgment has begun to come to pass. Similarly, the structural parallels between Obadiah and Amos 9 do more than create an artistic linchpin between two writings. The structural parallels draw attention to the common fate of the two neighboring countries, conceptualized by Judah as its closest kin.

Nogalski confidently claims that "Malachi 1:2-5 explicitly takes up the book of Obadiah." Nogalski believes that Edom's resolve to rebuild "plays off Obadiah 3-4"; for him, the language "alludes quite clearly" to Obadiah 4. He thinks that, although the eponymous name Esau ultimately derives from the Genesis traditions, its rarity in the prophetic literature (only Jeremiah 49:8, 10 and Obadiah 6, 8, 9, 18, 19, 21) introduces the possibility that Malachi may be alluding to Jeremiah or Obadiah. Nogalski opts for Obadiah over Jeremiah on the basis of the transmission history of The Twelve and also the topographical connectors — "his mountains" (Malachi 1:3) and "Mount Esau" (Obadiah 8, 18) — which describe Edom's terrain and which are exclusive to these two texts.