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it has cherished everlasting enmity, and given up the sons of Israel to the sword, בּעת אידם בּעת עון קץ (Oba 1:5), because it has said, The two nations (Judah and Israel) shall be mine, we will take possession of them (Oba 1:10); because it has cherished hatred toward the sons of Israel, and spoken blasphemy against the mountains of Israel, and said they are laid waste, they are given to us for food (Oba 1:12); because it has taken pleasure in the desolation of the inheritance of the house of Israel (Oba 1:15). There is a most unambiguous allusion here to the desolating of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem, and to the hostilities which the Edomites displayed when this calamity fell upon Judah. On the other hand, Obadiah does not hint at the destruction of Jerusalem in a single word. He neither speaks of the everlasting enmity of Edom, nor of the fact that it wanted to get possession of Judah and Israel for itself, but simply of the hostile behaviour of the Edomites towards the brother nation Judah, when enemies forced their way into Jerusalem and plundered its treasures, and the sons of Judah perished. Consequently Obadiah has before his eyes simply the conquest and plundering of Jerusalem by foreign, i.e., heathen foes, but not the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. Even Caspari is obliged to admit, that there is no necessity to understand most (or more correctly “any”) of the separate expressions of Obadiah as referring to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans; but, in his opinion, this allusion is required by “what is said in Oba 1:11-14 when taken all together, inasmuch as the prophet there describes the day of Jerusalem by the strongest possible names, following one upon another, as the day of his people's rejection, the day of their distress (twice), and the day of their calamity (three times).” But even this we cannot regard as well established, since neither יום נכרו nor יום אידו designates the calamitous day as a day of rejection; and יום אבדם cannot possibly denote the utter destruction of all the Judaeans, but simply affirms that the sons of Judah perished en masse. The other epithets, נכר, איד, צרה, do not enable us to define more precisely the nature of the calamity which befel Judah at that time; and the crowding together of these expressions simply shows that the calamity was a very great one, and not that Jerusalem was destroyed and the kingdom of Judah dissolved.