¹ Vision of Obadiah: about Edom. I have received a message from Yahweh, a herald has been sent throughout the nations: 'Up! Let us march against this people. Into battle!' The Lord Yahweh says this:

² Look, I have reduced you to the smallest of nations, you are now beneath contempt.

³ Your proud heart has misled you, you whose home is in the crannies of the Rock, who make the heights your dwelling, who think to yourself, 'Who can bring me down to earth?'

⁴ Though you soar like an eagle, though you set your nest among the stars, I shall bring you down from there!-declares Yahweh.

⁵ If thieves were to come to you (or robbers during the night) surely they would steal only as much as they wanted? If grape-pickers were to come to you, surely they would leave a few gleanings? But how you have been pillaged!

⁶ How Esau has been looted, his hidden treasures routed out!

⁷ Your allies all pursued you right to the frontier, your confederates kept you in suspense, then got the better of you, your own guests laid a trap for you, 'He has quite lost his wits.'

⁸ When that day comes- declares Yahweh- shall I not eliminate sages from Edom and intelligence from Mount Esau?

⁹ Your warriors, Teman, will be so demoralised that the people of Mount Esau will be massacred to the last one. For the slaughter,

¹⁰ for the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame will cover you and you will be annihilated for ever.

¹¹ On the day, when you stood aloof while strangers carried off his riches, while foreigners passed through his gate and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were as bad as the rest of them.

¹² Do not feast your eyes on your brother on the day of his misfortune. Do not gloat over the children of Judah on the day of their ruin. Do not play the braggart on the day of distress.

¹³ Do not enter my people's gate on their day of calamity. Do not, you especially, feast your eyes on their suffering on their day of calamity. Do not touch their possessions on their day of calamity.

¹⁴ Do not wait at the crossroads to annihilate their fugitives. Do not hand over their survivors on the day of distress.

¹⁵ For the Day of Yahweh is near for all the nations. As you have done, so will it be done to you: your deeds will recoil on your own head.

¹⁶ Just as you have drunk on my holy mountain, so will all the nations drink continually, they will drink, will drink greedily, but they will be as though they had never been!

¹⁷ But on Mount Zion will be those who have escaped -it will be a sanctuary- and the House of Jacob will recover what is rightfully theirs.

¹⁸ Then the House of Jacob will be a fire, the House of Joseph a flame, and the House of Esau like stubble. They will set it alight and burn it up, and no one of the House of Esau will survive. Yahweh has spoken.

¹⁹ People from the Negeb will occupy the Mount of Esau, people from the lowlands the country of the Philistines; they will occupy Ephraim and Samaria, and Benjamin will occupy Gilead.

²⁰ The exiles of this army, the sons of Israel, will have the Canaanites' land as far as Zarephthah, while the exiles from Jerusalem now in Sepharad will have the cities of the Negeb.

²¹ Victorious, they will climb Mount Zion to rule over Mount Esau, and sovereignty will be Yahweh's!

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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