2Sa 22:17, or Psa 18:17, where shâlach occurs in the sense of stretching out the hand. חילו, his possessions. On the fact itself, compare Joe 3:5. The prominence given to the day of misfortune at the end of every sentence is very emphatic; “inasmuch as the selection of the time of a brother's calamity, as that in which to rage against him with such cunning and malicious pleasure, was doubly culpable” (Ewald). In Oba 1:14 the warning proceeds to the worst crime of all, their seizing upon the Judaean fugitives, for the purpose of murdering them or delivering them up to the enemy. Pereq signifies here the place where the roads break or divide, the cross-road. In Nah 3:1, the only other place in which it occurs, it signifies tearing in pieces, violence. Hisgı̄r, to deliver up (lit., concludendum tradidit), is generally construed with אל (Deu 23:16) or בּיד (Psa 31:9; 1Sa 23:11). Here it is written absolutely with the same meaning: not “to apprehend, or so overpower that there is no escape left” (Hitzig). This would affirm too little after the preceding הכרית, and cannot be demonstrated from Job 11:10, where hisgı̄r means to keep in custody.
Verses 15-16
This warning is supported in Oba 1:15 by an announcement of the day of the Lord, in which Edom and all the enemies of Israel will receive just retribution for their sins against Israel. Oba 1:15. “For the day of Jehovah is near upon all nations. As thou hast done, it will be done to thee; what thou hast performed returns upon thy head. Oba 1:16. For as ye have drunken upon my holy mountain, all nations will drink continually, and drink and swallow, and will be as those that were not.” כּי (for) connects what follows with the warnings in Oba 1:12-14, but not also, or exclusively, with Oba 1:10, Oba 1:11, as Rosenmüller and others suppose, for Oba 1:2-14 are not inserted parenthetically. “The day of Jehovah” has been explained at Joe 1:15. The expression was first formed by Obadiah, not by Joel; and Joel, Isaiah, and the prophets that follow, adopted it from Obadiah. The primary meaning is not the day of judgment, but the day on which Jehovah reveals His majesty and omnipotence in a glorious manner, to overthrow all ungodly powers, and to complete His kingdom. It was this which gave rise to the idea of the day of judgment and retribution which predominates in the prophetic announcements, but which simply forms one side of the revelation of the glory of God, as our passage at once shows;
