The Prophet Obadiah, expounded by Charles Paul Caspari [pp. 226-240]

Ile Prophet Obadiah, Expounded
been expected, they have deceived thee; and that not merely
by withholding assistance; they have committed positive unlooked-for acts of hostility, and have prevailed against thee.
The next clause is best translated by the assumption of an
ellipsis which is, it is true, an unusual one. But this is preferable to the violation of the accents with some interpreters, and
to the forced constructions adopted by others. "The men of
thy bread lay a snare under thee," i. e. those whom thou hast
befriended, or who have derived their subsistence from thee,
have requited thy kindness with perfidy and betrayal.
Thus forsaken and betrayed by all their allies and former
friends, they should fall into utter perplexity and distraction of
counsels. That "there is none understanding in him" is here
stated, not as the cause of misfortunes just detailed, nor as a
judgment based upon them (equivalent to saying, if they were
as wise as they profess to be, they would not suffer themselves
to be so imposed upon), but as in part at least their result. And
to render their condition perfectly hopeless, their last dependence should be stricken from them by a direct divine infliction.
The sagacity for which their wise' men were famed, and the
bravery of the warriors of Teman (a part of Idumea, so named
from the grandson of Esau, or as being the southern district of
the land, here used interchangeably with Esau and Edom as
their poetic equivalent) God would himself destroy, in order
that the entire people left thus defenceless might be "cut off by
slaughter." The common rendering of these last words is
preferable to the translation "without slaughter," i. e. they
shall from mere faintheartedness be vanquished without a
battle; or "because of slaughter," viz. thy slaughter of Israel,
whether the words be connected in this sense with the close of
v. 9, or in imitation of the Vulgate, Septuagint and Peshito, but
in opposition to the accents and the Masoretic division of the
verses, with the beginning of v. 10, (For the slaughter and for
the violence, &c.)
The second portion of the prophecy explains the reason of
this terrible visitation. "For thy violence," in itself an atrocity,
but aggravated by being committed against a brother, and that
too Esau's twin-brother Jacob, "shame shall cover thee, and
thou shalt be cut off for ever," as already predicted.
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