Obadiah the Prophet עובדיה הנביא

Obadiah's book is the shortest in the Tanakh. It has no dating, no father's name, no town: simply "the vision of Obadiah."

The whole of it concerns Edom, the descendants of Esau, Jacob's brother. The charge is not attack but something worse: "on the day you stood aloof, on the day strangers carried off his forces... you too were like one of them." He did not help — he stood and watched, and afterwards came down to pick over what the victors left and to cut off the fugitives at the crossroads. Hence the line that became a proverb: "you should not have gazed on your brother's day, on the day of his calamity."

Who he was the book does not say; the Talmud does. Sanhedrin 39b: Obadiah was a convert from Edom — and God gave the rebuke of Edom to the man who came from there, "let Obadiah, who lived among two wicked people and did not learn from their deeds, come and punish Esau, who lived among two righteous people and did not learn from their deeds." The two wicked people are Ahab and Jezebel: by the same tradition Obadiah the prophet is Obadiah who was over Ahab's household, the man who hid a hundred prophets in two caves and fed them bread and water.

The book ends not with Edom but with what it was all said for: "and saviours shall go up on Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau, and the kingship shall be the LORD's."