Obadiah 1:19 Commentary and Bible Study

Here is how all the pagan lands and people of the region will become the property of Israel. ‘They of the south shall possess the mount of Esau; and they of the plains [shall possess] the Philistines: and they shall possess the fields of Ephraim’, and on it goes. The people of God will get all the territory. Any attempt to interpret this literally gets into difficulties; this is spiritual language. Calvin says, ‘It is certain that this prophecy has never been completed: we know that but a small portion of the land was possessed by the Jews.’ The prophet deliberately speaks in terms which stretch literal possibilities to the limit and beyond, because he is forcing us to interpret this in terms of the expansion of the kingdom of heaven, not the literal possession of land by Israel. He describes the expansion of territory into Edom. Balaam’s prophecy in Numbers 24:15-24 identifies this as taking place during after ‘a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre’ have arisen, that is, in the time of Messiah, the gospel age. This was territory which Israel was strictly forbidden by God (who does not change his mind) to take for herself: ‘Meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot breadth; because I have given mount Seir unto Esau for a possession’ (Deuteronomy 2:5). It should be clear then that this is not to be understood literally. Likewise they would expand into Philistine territory to the west, and to the north where Ephraim was situated, and Benjamin, the smallest tribe, was foretold to take possession of Gilead to the east of Jordan where the two and a half tribes, Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh settled in the time of Moses. ‘The captivity of this host of the children of Israel’ – that is, those taken into exile in Babylon – ‘shall possess that of the Canaanites, even unto Zarephath’ – the home of the widow where Elijah was fed near Sidon on the coast. Those from Jerusalem who had been carried away to a place called Sepharad, would return and possess the cities of the south.