Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/760

702 O B A O B A or engagement purporting or intending to bind the person tak ing the same to engage in any mutinous or seditious purpose ; to disturb the public peace ; to be of any association, society, or confederacy formed for any such purpose ; to obey the orders or commands of any committee or body of men not lawfully consti tuted, or of any leader or commander, or other person not having authority by law for that purpose ; not to inform or give evidence against any associate, confederate, or other person ; not to reveal or discover any unlawful combination or confederacy or any illegal act done or to be done, or any illegal oath or engagement which may have been administered or tendered to or taken by any person, or the import of any such oath or engagement ; (b) to take any such oath or engagement, not being compelled thereto (37 George III. c. 123, s. 1). Compulsion is no defence unless the person taking the oath or engagement within fourteen days (in the case of oaths falling under 52 George III. c. 104) or within four days if not prevented by actual force or sickness, and then within four days after the cessation of the hindrance produced by such force or sick ness (in the case of oaths falling under 37 George III. c. 123), declares the circumstances of the administration of the oath by information on oath before a justice of the peace or a secretary of state or the privy council, or, if on active service, to his command ing officer. The Draft Criminal Code proposes to incorporate these provisions with little alteration. The Irish Act (50 George III. c. 102) is more stringent than 37 George III. c. 123, as the person administering the oath is punishable with penal servitude for life, the person taking the oath is punishable as in England and Scot land. A club or society in which members are required or per mitted to take an unlawful oath is unlawful, and the members may be proceeded against either summarily or by indictment (39 George III. c. 79, 57 George III. c. 19). The latter statute, as appears from the preamble, was specially aimed at the corresponding societies which existed in Great Britain at the time of the French Revolution. Politicians and moralists have placed much reliance on oaths as a practical security. It has been held, as Lycur- gus the orator said to the Athenians, that " an oath is the bond .that keeps the state together" (Lycurg., Leocr., 80 ; see Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws). Thus modern law- books quote from the leading case of Omychund v. Barker : " No country can subsist a twelvemonth where an oath is thought not binding ; for the want of it must necessarily dissolve society." On the other hand, wherever the belief in supernatural interference becomes weakened, and oaths are taken with solemn form but secret contempt or open ridicule, they become a serious moral scandal, as had already begun to happen in classical times. The yet more disastrous effect of the practice of swearing is the public inference that, if a man has to swear in order to be believed, he need not speak the truth when not under oath. The early Christian fathers were alive to this depreciation of ordinary truthfulness by the practice of swearing, and opposed, though unavailingly, the system of oaths which more and more pervaded public business. How in the course of the Middle Ages oaths were multiplied is best seen by examining a collection of formulas such as the Book of Oaths (London, 1649), which range from the coronation oath to the oaths sworn by such as valuers of cloths and the city scavengers. 1 Oaths of allegiance and other official oaths are still taken throughout Europe, but experience shows that in times of revolution they are violated with little scruple, and in the case of the United Kingdom it is doubtful whether they have any more prac tical value than, if so much as, simple declarations. The question of legal oaths is more difficult. On the one hand, it is admitted that they do induce witnesses, especially the ignorant and superstitious, to give evidence more truth fully than they would do on even solemn declaration. On the other hand, all who practise in courts of justice declare that a large proportion of the evidence given under oath is knowingly false, and that such perjury is perceptibly detrimental to public morals. The lowering of truth in ordinary intercourse, which follows from the requirement of swearing as a confirmation in public matters, remains 1 As to reform of the excessive multiplication of oaths see Paley_, Moral Philosophy, book iii. part i. chap. 16; aud J. E. Tyler, Oaths. much as it was in ancient times. One noteworthy point is that an effect is now produced by oaths foreign to their proper purpose, which is to use the sanction of religion for the enforcement of obligations; now, however, the oath has passed into a sanction of the religion, so that an oath taken in legal form is construed as a confession of faith in Chris tianity, or at least in the existence of God. (E. B. T.) OBADIAH (nnai?, O/JSeiov, A/3Sioi>, Abdias) is a name pretty frequent in the Old Testament, meaning " servant " or worshipper " of Jehovah." It is synonymous with Abdi and Abdeel, and of a type common in Semitic proper names ; compare the Arabic Abdall&h, Taimallat, Abd Man At, &c., the Hebrew Obed Edom, and many Phoenician forms. The name of Obadiah is prefixed to the fourth and shortest book of the minor prophets, and as no date or other historical note is added it is not surprising that an early Hebrew tradition recorded by Jerome (Comm. in Ob.} identified the prophet with the best-known Obadiah of the historical books, the protector of the prophets in the reign of Ahab (1 Kings xviii.). His tomb was shown in Samaria with those of Elisha and John the Baptist, and the Epitaphium Paulse describes the wild performances, analogous to those of modern dervishes, that took place before these shrines. It is now agreed on all hands that it is vain to connect Obadiah the prophet with any other Obadiah of the Old Testament, and that our only clue to the date and compo sition of the book lies in internal evidence. The prophecy is directed against Edom. Jehovah has sent a messenger forth among the nations to stir them up to battle against the proud inhabitants of Mount Seir, to bring them down from the rocky fastnesses which they deem impregnable. Edom shall be not only plundered but utterly undone and expelled from his borders, and this he shall suffer (through his own folly) at the hand of trusted allies (vers. 1-9). The cause of this judgment is his cruelty to his brother Jacob. In the day of Jerusalem s overthrow the Edomites rejoiced over the calamity, grasped at a share of the spoil, lay in wait to cut off the fugitives (vers. 10-14). But now the day of Jehovah is near upon all nations, Esau and all the heathen shall drink full retribution for their banquet of carnage and plunder on Jehovah s holy mountain. A rescued Israel shall dwell in Mount Zion in restored holiness; the house of Jacob shall regain their old possessions ; Edom shall be burned up before them as chaff before the flame ; they shall spread over all Canaan, over the mountain of Esau and the south of Judah as well as over Gilead and the Philistine and Phoenician coast. The victorious Israel ites shall come up on Mount Zion to rule the mountain of Esau, and the kingdom shall be Jehovah s (vers. 15-21). In vers. 10-14 the expositor finds sure foothold. The calamity of Jerusalem can only be the sack of the city by Nebuchadnezzar; the malevolence and cruelty of Edom on this occasion are characterized in similar terms by several writers of the exile, but by none with the same circumstance and vividness of detail as here (Ezek. xxv. 8, 12 sq., xxxv. ; Lam. iv. 21 ; Psalm cxxxvii.). It is impossible to doubt that these verses were written under the lively and recent impression of the events to which they refer ; to regard them as predictive (Caspari, Pusey, itc.) is to misunderstand the whole character of prophetic foresight, and to ascribe them with Hitzig to the Persian or Greek period is equally unreasonable. The opening verses, of the prophecy, on the other hand, present a real difficulty. Obad. 1-6, 8 agree so closely and in part verbally with Jer. xlix. 14-16, 9, 10, 7 that the two passages can not be independent ; nor does it seem possible that Obadiah quotes from Jeremiah, for Obad. 1-8 is a well- connected whole, while the parallel verses in Jeremiah appear in different order, interspersed with other matter,