Texts in Conversation
Obadiah describes nations drinking the cup of wrath on the holy mountain. Isaiah 51 develops this image, depicting Jerusalem as having drunk the cup dry before God removes it and passes it to her oppressors.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 51:22
Hebrew Bible
17 Wake up! Wake up! Get up, O Jerusalem! You drank from the cup the Lord passed to you, which was full of his anger. You drained dry the goblet full of intoxicating wine. 18 There was no one to lead her among all the children she bore; there was no one to take her by the hand among all the children she raised. 19 These double disasters confronted you. But who feels sorry for you? Destruction and devastation, famine and sword. But who consoles you? 20 Your children faint; they lie at the head of every street like an antelope in a snare. They are left in a stupor by the Lord’s anger, by the battle cry of your God. 21 So listen to this, oppressed one, who is drunk, but not from wine. 22 This is what your Sovereign Lord, even your God who judges his people says: “Look, I have removed from your hand the cup of intoxicating wine, the goblet full of my anger. You will no longer have to drink it. 23 I will put it into the hand of your tormentors who said to you, ‘Lie down, so we can walk over you.’ You made your back like the ground and like the street for those who walked over you.”
Obadiah 1:16
Hebrew Bible
15 “For the day of the Lord is approaching for all the nations! Just as you have done, so it will be done to you. You will get exactly what your deeds deserve. 16 For just as you have drunk on my holy mountain, so all the nations will drink continually. They will drink, and they will gulp down; they will be as though they had never been. 17 But on Mount Zion there will be a remnant of those who escape, and it will be a holy place once again. The descendants of Jacob will conquer those who had conquered them. 18 The descendants of Jacob will be a fire and the descendants of Joseph a flame. The descendants of Esau will be like stubble. They will burn them up and devour them. There will not be a single survivor of the descendants of Esau!” Indeed, the Lord has spoken it.
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Notes and References
We find a very similar picture Isaiah 51. Roused for the end of exile and return to the Promised Land, Jerusalem is depicted as having drunk from the cup of wrath such that no one is left to lead them back home. In their state of drunkenness and staggering, Yhwh will graciously remove the cup from His people and pass it on to the instruments of His wrath, the enemies who originally attacked her. Although DOL does not appear explicitly in Isaiah 51, chapter 13 shows that the judgment of all the earth including Babylon — the enemy in view here — will take place on DOL. Grace for Israel and judgment for the nations join together as they have already in Obadiah. In this subsection we have traced the theme of the cup of Yhwh's wrath through DOL contexts in the prophets in an attempt to define how Obadiah is developed through them. We observed a substantial agreement between Obadiah and Isaiah 51.
Forbes, Daniel
The Intertextual Impact of Obadiah on the Writing Prophets
(pp. 76-77) The Master's College, 2014
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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