Jeremiah 49
The oracle against the nations now sweeps the compass. Having spoken at length against Moab, Jeremiah turns in quick succession to a ring of peoples surrounding Israel: Ammon to the east, across the Jordan; Edom to the south, in the red rock-country below the Dead Sea; Damascus to the north; the wandering tribes of Kedar and Hazor far out in the eastern desert; and Elam, farthest of all, away beyond the Tigris. Each oracle is short and sharp, and the cumulative effect is deliberate - no direction on the map is left untouched, no nation imagined to stand beyond the government of the God of Israel. Concerning the Ammonites, thus saith the LORD (v. 1); Concerning Edom (v. 7); Concerning Damascus (v. 23); Concerning Kedar (v. 28); against Elam (v. 34). One after another, the kingdoms of the earth are summoned before a throne they did not know was over them.3
At the centre of the chapter, and given by far the most space, stands Edom. Descended from Esau, Jacob's brother, and lodged in the towering rose-red cliffs of its mountain strongholds, Edom had made a fortress of its geography and an idol of its own security. The prophet names the disease exactly: Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence (v. 16). It is the same charge the prophet Obadiah brings against Edom - a heart so lifted up by its unreachable home that it imagined no power could ever reach it. And the answer of the chapter is the answer of all Scripture: the high nest comes down. I have made Esau bare (v. 10); the proud rock-dweller is stripped of every hiding place.
Yet for all its severity, the chapter is threaded with a mercy that keeps breaking through. Twice, over nations that were Israel's foes, the LORD adds a word no oracle of doom requires. The judgment on Ammon ends not in ruin but in restoration: afterward I will bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith the LORD (v. 6). And the final word of the whole chapter, spoken over distant Elam after the breaking of its bow and the scattering of its people to the four winds, is not destruction but hope: But it shall come to pass in the latter days, that I will bring again the captivity of Elam, saith the LORD (v. 39). The oracles fall like hammer-blows; and through them, again and again, sounds the surprising note that even for these far-off enemies the LORD keeps a door of mercy ajar.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Jeremiah 49:1-6Concerning Ammon · Hath Israel No Heir?
1Concerning the Ammonites, thus saith the LORD; Hath Israel no sons? hath he no heir? why then doth their king inherit Gad, and his people dwell in his cities? 2Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will cause an alarm of war to be heard in Rabbah of the Ammonites; and it shall be a desolate heap, and her daughters shall be burned with fire: then shall Israel be heir unto them that were his heirs, saith the LORD. 3Howl, O Heshbon, for Ai is spoiled: cry, ye daughters of Rabbah, gird you with sackcloth; lament, and run to and fro by the hedges; for their king shall go into captivity, and his priests and his princes together. 4Wherefore gloriest thou in the valleys, thy flowing valley, O backsliding daughter? that trusted in her treasures, saying, Who shall come unto me? 5Behold, I will bring a fear upon thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts, from all those that be about thee; and ye shall be driven out every man right forth; and none shall gather up him that wandereth. 6And afterward I will bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith the LORD.
The first oracle opens with a pointed question rather than a threat: Hath Israel no sons? hath he no heir? why then doth their king inherit Gad, and his people dwell in his cities? (v. 1). The Ammonites, descended from Lot and settled east of the Jordan, had moved into the territory of Gad - the land of the Israelite tribe that once lived there - and occupied its cities as though Israel had simply died out and left no one to claim the inheritance. When the northern tribes were carried away by Assyria, Ammon had seized the emptied land as spoil. The LORD's question exposes the theft for what it is. Israel was not heirless; the land had an owner, and a covenant lay over it that Ammon had ignored. There is a quiet principle here that reaches far beyond one ancient land-grab: the strong are forever tempted to treat the misfortune of others as an open invitation, to move into whatever the weak can no longer defend. Heaven keeps a different ledger. Then shall Israel be heir unto them that were his heirs (v. 2) - the seizer will himself be dispossessed, and the rightful inheritance restored. What is taken by exploiting another's weakness is never as securely held as the taker imagines.3
The judgment falls heavily on Ammon's proud capital. Howl, O Heshbon… cry, ye daughters of Rabbah, gird you with sackcloth… for their king shall go into captivity, and his priests and his princes together (v. 3). Rabbah, the great Ammonite city, is summoned to mourning, and even its god - the KJV calls the national deity here by the title of the king who goes into captivity “with his priests and his princes” - is shown powerless to save it. Then the prophet names the root of Ammon's confidence, and it is a familiar one: Wherefore gloriest thou in the valleys, thy flowing valley, O backsliding daughter? that trusted in her treasures, saying, Who shall come unto me? (v. 4). Two things had become Ammon's security - the fertility of its well-watered valleys and the wealth those valleys produced. Out of that abundance grew a fatal sentence: Who shall come unto me? It is the language of a heart that believes itself beyond reach, insulated by prosperity from any real threat. The same false security will reappear, in even sharper form, in the oracle against Edom that follows. A nation that has grown comfortable in its riches comes to imagine that no one and nothing can touch it - and that imagining is itself the first crack in the wall.1
And then, abruptly, the oracle does what this whole chapter will keep doing: it turns from doom to mercy. After the fear and the driving-out and the scattering of verse 5, the LORD adds a single line that no word of judgment requires: And afterward I will bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith the LORD (v. 6). The word afterward is the hinge. Beyond the ruin lies a restoration; the judgment has a far side, and on that far side stands grace. This is not the language one expects toward a nation that had despised Israel and plundered its land. Yet here it is, the same surprising note that closed the long oracle against Moab in the chapter before - mercy held out to the very enemy under sentence. It tells us something about the heart behind these oracles. The LORD's purpose in judgment is never mere destruction; even when He must dispossess a people, He keeps a door open beyond the dispossession. Ammon's sin is real and its punishment is real, but neither is the last word. The last word, even here, is I will bring again.
Jeremiah 49:7-13Concerning Edom · I Have Made Esau Bare
7Concerning Edom, thus saith the LORD of hosts; Is wisdom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom vanished? 8Flee ye, turn back, dwell deep, O inhabitants of Dedan; for I will bring the calamity of Esau upon him, the time that I will visit him. 9If grapegatherers come to thee, would they not leave some gleaning grapes? if thieves by night, they will destroy till they have enough. 10But I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret places, and he shall not be able to hide himself: his seed is spoiled, and his brethren, and his neighbours, and he is not. 11Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me. 12For thus saith the LORD; Behold, they whose judgment was not to drink of the cup have assuredly drunken; and art thou he that shall altogether go unpunished? thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt surely drink of it. 13For I have sworn by myself, saith the LORD, that Bozrah shall become a desolation, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes.
The Edom oracle - the longest in the chapter, and closely echoing the prophet Obadiah - opens by striking at the very thing Edom was famous for. Is wisdom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom vanished? (v. 7). Teman was a chief city of Edom, and the Edomites had a reputation across the ancient world for shrewdness and sage counsel. The three questions are heavy with irony. The nation renowned for its wisdom is about to be caught utterly without it - for all its cleverness could not see the one thing that mattered, that it stood under the judgment of God. There is a sharp warning folded into the irony. A people, or a person, may possess every kind of practical shrewdness - skill in trade, in strategy, in self-advancement - and yet be a fool in the one reckoning that finally counts. Edom's wisdom was real on its own level and useless on the level that mattered most. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, the Scriptures say; and a wisdom that does not begin there, however dazzling, has missed its foundation and will not stand when the ground shakes.3
The prophet then draws a vivid contrast to measure how total Edom's ruin will be. If grapegatherers come to thee, would they not leave some gleaning grapes? if thieves by night, they will destroy till they have enough (v. 9). Even harvesters stripping a vineyard leave a few grapes behind; even thieves stop once they have taken what they came for. There is a limit to ordinary plunder. But the judgment on Edom will respect no such limit: But I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret places, and he shall not be able to hide himself… and he is not (v. 10). The phrase made Esau bare is striking - Edom is stripped naked, exposed, its hidden refuges in the rocks laid open so that nowhere is left to run. This is the nation that trusted in its unreachable cliffs and secret mountain hideaways; the LORD says He has uncovered his secret places, peeling back the very defences Edom counted on. The whole fortress-confidence of Edom rested on being hidden and unfindable; and the judgment goes straight for that confidence, leaving the proud rock-dweller with no place to hide at all. What a person hides behind, when God uncovers it, is no protection.
In the middle of this severe oracle there falls a single line of startling tenderness: Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me (v. 11). Edom's warriors and proud men are swept away, but a word of refuge is held out to the most defenceless who remain - the orphans and the widows. Even here, in the judgment of an enemy nation, the LORD shows the care for the fatherless and the widow that runs all through His law and His heart. It is a quiet but telling glimpse. The judgment that falls on Edom's pride is not a blind, indiscriminate wrath; it is aimed at the arrogance that magnified itself, and it still has room for mercy toward the helpless caught in the wreckage. The proud who said Who shall come unto me? are brought down; the orphan with no protector is invited to find one in God Himself. This same God who declares Himself a father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows (Ps. 68:5) does not forget them even amid the fall of the nation they belonged to. Then the oracle returns to its theme: Edom, who might have thought itself exempt, must drink the cup of judgment that even less guilty nations have had to drink (v. 12), and its great city Bozrah is sworn to perpetual ruin (v. 13).1
Jeremiah 49:14-22The Pride of Thine Heart Hath Deceived Thee
14I have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent unto the heathen, saying, Gather ye together, and come against her, and rise up to the battle. 15For, lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, and despised among men. 16Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the LORD. 17Also Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof. 18As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbour cities thereof, saith the LORD, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it. 19Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the swelling of Jordan against the habitation of the strong: but I will suddenly make him run away from her: and who is a chosen man, that I may appoint over her? for who is like me? and who will appoint me the time? and who is that shepherd that will stand before me? 20Therefore hear the counsel of the LORD, that he hath taken against Edom; and his purposes, that he hath purposed against the inhabitants of Teman: Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out: surely he shall make their habitations desolate with them. 21The earth is moved at the noise of their fall, at the cry the noise thereof was heard in the Red sea. 22Behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle, and spread his wings over Bozrah: and at that day shall the heart of the mighty men of Edom be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.
Here is the verse the whole Edom oracle turns on, and one of Scripture's sharpest portraits of pride: Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the LORD (v. 16). Two things had deceived Edom. The first was its terribleness - the fearsome reputation it had built, the dread its fierceness inspired in others. The second, deeper, was the pride of thine heart. And the image is exact, drawn straight from Edom's famous home. The Edomites lived in the rose-red rock-clefts of their mountain country, in cliff-fortresses perched at dizzying heights, reachable only through narrow gorges - a place that genuinely looked impregnable. Living somewhere unreachable had bred a heart that felt unreachable. Though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle - even if you climbed to the very crags where the eagle builds, beyond any human grasp - I will bring thee down from thence. No height is high enough to escape the reach of God. The fortress that deceived Edom into pride could not, in the end, fend off the One whose hand reaches even to the eagle's nest. The lie at the heart of all pride is that there exists some height, some achievement, some security, that puts a person beyond accountability. There is none.1
The oracle now piles image upon image to convey how complete and astonishing the fall will be. Edom shall become a desolation, so utterly ruined that every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss (v. 17) - passers-by will gasp and shudder at the wreckage of a nation that once seemed untouchable. The ruin is compared to the most absolute overthrow in Israel's memory: As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah… no man shall abide there (v. 18). Then comes a series of unanswerable questions that lift the eye from Edom to the LORD Himself: who is like me? and who will appoint me the time? and who is that shepherd that will stand before me? (v. 19). The conqueror is pictured surging up like a lion from the swelling of Jordan against Edom's lofty stronghold, and no champion can be found to face him. The questions make the real point of the whole chapter explicit. Behind the armies and the falling cities stands a God to whom none can be compared, whose appointed times no one can overrule, before whom no ruler can take his stand. Edom thought the decisive power was its own - its cliffs, its fierceness, its wisdom. The decisive power was always the LORD's. The earth is moved at the noise of their fall (v. 21); the eagle that spreads its wings over Bozrah (v. 22) descends at His command, not Edom's.
Jeremiah 49:23-27Concerning Damascus · The City of Praise
23Concerning Damascus. Hamath is confounded, and Arpad: for they have heard evil tidings: they are fainthearted; there is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet. 24Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken her, as a woman in travail. 25How is the city of praise not left, the city of my joy! 26Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD of hosts. 27And I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall consume the palaces of Benhadad.
The oracle turns north to Damascus, the ancient capital of Syria, and with it the nearby cities of Hamath and Arpad. The note here is not arrogance, as with Edom, but sheer terror. Hamath is confounded, and Arpad: for they have heard evil tidings: they are fainthearted; there is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet (v. 23). Word of the advancing disaster reaches the cities, and their courage simply dissolves. The picture of sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet is vivid - the heart of the people churns like a sea that cannot settle, tossed and restless with dread. Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken her, as a woman in travail (v. 24). A great and storied city, long a power in the region, melts into panic. The image of a woman gripped by labour pains recurs through these oracles - sudden, overwhelming, inescapable distress that no strength of will can master. There is a sober realism in it. The mightiest human strongholds are, at the deepest level, only as steady as the courage of the people inside them; and courage, when God removes its props, can drain away in an hour. Damascus had stood for centuries. Its confidence proves no more durable than the rest.3
A single line carries the pathos of the whole Damascus oracle: How is the city of praise not left, the city of my joy! (v. 25). Damascus was renowned - a celebrated city, famed for its beauty and its gardens, “the city of praise.” The lament asks, with something close to grief, how such a city has come to be abandoned. There is even a tenderness in the phrase the city of my joy - as though the loss of even this proud foreign capital is registered as a loss, not merely a verdict. Then the judgment is stated plainly: her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be cut off (v. 26), and I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall consume the palaces of Benhadad (v. 27). Benhadad was the name borne by a line of Syrian kings whose palaces stood for the glory and power of Damascus; the fire that consumes them is the fire of judgment reaching the very seat of the city's pride. What strikes most is how the celebrated and the doomed turn out to be the same city. A place can be famous, admired, beautiful, “a city of praise” on every tongue - and still stand under judgment. Reputation among people is no shield before God. The renown of Damascus could not keep its young men from falling or its palaces from the flame.
Jeremiah 49:28-39Kedar and Hazor · And the Mercy on Elam
28Concerning Kedar, and concerning the kingdoms of Hazor, which Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon shall smite, thus saith the LORD; Arise ye, go up to Kedar, and spoil the men of the east. 29Their tents and their flocks shall they take away: they shall take to themselves their curtains, and all their vessels, and their camels; and they shall cry unto them, Fear is on every side. 30Flee, get you far off, dwell deep, O ye inhabitants of Hazor, saith the LORD; for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath taken counsel against you, and hath conceived a purpose against you. 31Arise, get you up unto the wealthy nation, that dwelleth without care, saith the LORD, which have neither gates nor bars, which dwell alone. 32And their camels shall be a booty, and the multitude of their cattle a spoil: and I will scatter into all winds them that are in the utmost corners; and I will bring their calamity from all sides thereof, saith the LORD. 33And Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desolation for ever: there shall no man abide there, nor any son of man dwell in it. 34The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet against Elam in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, saying, 35Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Behold, I will break the bow of Elam, the chief of their might. 36And upon Elam will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and will scatter them toward all those winds; and there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come. 37For I will cause Elam to be dismayed before their enemies, and before them that seek their life: and I will bring evil upon them, even my fierce anger, saith the LORD; and I will send the sword after them, till I have consumed them: 38And I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from thence the king and the princes, saith the LORD. 39But it shall come to pass in the latter days, that I will bring again the captivity of Elam, saith the LORD.
The oracle now reaches the open desert, to Kedar and the kingdoms of Hazor - not a walled city this time but the tent-dwelling nomads of the eastern wilderness, the Arab tribes who lived by their flocks and camels. Babylon, named here for the first time as the LORD's instrument (v. 28), will fall even on these. And the prophet draws their way of life with a telling phrase: this is the wealthy nation, that dwelleth without care… which have neither gates nor bars, which dwell alone (v. 31). It is a portrait of a people who felt no need of defences. They had no city walls, no fortified gates, no barred doors - the desert itself was their wall, their remoteness their security, and they lived without care, untroubled, sure that no army would ever cross the wilderness to find them. Different from Edom's cliffs and Damascus's renown, but the same false confidence underneath: the conviction that distance and obscurity put a people beyond reach. The LORD answers it as He answered Edom's nest: I will scatter into all winds them that are in the utmost corners (v. 32). The very remoteness Kedar trusted in becomes the measure of its scattering - flung to the farthest corners, to all the winds. No hiding place is too far. The God who reaches the eagle's nest reaches the desert tent as well.3
The final and farthest oracle falls on Elam, a people away beyond the Tigris, at the edge of the known world - and a note tells us it came in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah (v. 34), grounding even this distant word in a real moment of history. Elam was famed for its archers, and the LORD strikes at exactly that renown: I will break the bow of Elam, the chief of their might (v. 35). The bow was the nation's pride and its power; to break it is to break the very thing it boasted in - the same pattern as Edom's wisdom and Damascus's walls, each nation stripped of whatever it leaned on most. Then the scattering is total: the four winds from the four quarters of heaven… there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come (v. 36). And the LORD declares His own sovereignty over this remotest of peoples in the most direct terms of the chapter: I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from thence the king and the princes (v. 38). At the very edge of the map, beyond the reach of Israel's armies and almost beyond its knowledge, the LORD sets His throne. There is no land so distant that it lies outside His government. The God of Israel is not a local deity bounded by the Jordan; He rules to the four quarters of heaven.1
And then the whole long chapter of oracles ends, against every expectation, on a word of pure hope: But it shall come to pass in the latter days, that I will bring again the captivity of Elam, saith the LORD (v. 39). The single word But turns the last page of the judgment. After the broken bow, the four scattering winds, the fierce anger and the sword (v. 37), after the king and princes destroyed (v. 38) - but. In the latter days, the LORD will gather and restore even Elam, the farthest enemy of all. This is the second of the chapter's mercy-notes, echoing the afterward spoken over Ammon at the start (v. 6), and it is the more striking for falling last, as the final word of the entire sequence. The God who has just swept the compass with judgment closes not with destruction but with restoration - and not for Israel, but for distant, pagan Elam. It tells us, as plainly as anything in the chapter, where the heart of these oracles finally lies. Judgment is real and it is thorough; but it is never, even for the most far-off enemy, the LORD's last word. Beyond the scattering there is a gathering. Beyond the breaking there is a bringing-again. The chapter that opened by summoning the nations to judgment ends by holding the farthest of them a future.2
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 49 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for zedon libbekha (v. 16, “the pride of thine heart”), for the rock-dwelling imagery of Edom (chagvei ha-sela, “clefts of the rock”), and for the recurring promise shuv shevut (vv. 6, 39, “bring again the captivity”).
- Jeremiah 49 ↔ Obadiah · Luke 1 · Acts 2 · Revelation 7Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 49 to the rest of Scripture - Edom's rock-fortress pride (v. 16) read alongside Obadiah's Who shall bring me down to the ground? (Obad. 3) and the proud put down in Mary's song (Luke 1:51-52), and the mercy promised to Elam (v. 39) read beside the Elamites who heard the Gospel at Pentecost (Acts 2:9) and the multitude of all nations before the throne (Rev. 7:9).
- Jeremiah 49 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 49 - the geography and grievance behind the Ammon oracle (vv. 1-6), the close parallels between the Edom oracle (vv. 7-22) and the book of Obadiah, the lament over Damascus (vv. 23-27), and the placing of the Elam oracle in the reign of Zedekiah (v. 34).
Where this echoes in Scripture
Concerning Ammon · Hath Israel No Heir?
- Amos 1:13For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their border.Ammon judged for the same grasping after Israel’s land that opens this oracle (vv. 1-2).
- Zephaniah 2:9Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah... the residue of my people shall possess them.The same reversal as verse 2 - the seizer of the inheritance himself dispossessed.
- Proverbs 18:11The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit.Ammon’s false security of verse 4 - treasure mistaken for an unbreachable wall.
- Genesis 12:3and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.The promise behind the <em>afterward</em> of verse 6 - a mercy meant for every family of the earth.
- Luke 12:20Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?The <em>Who shall come unto me?</em> of verse 4 answered - the trust in treasure that proves no security at all.
Concerning Edom · I Have Made Esau Bare
- Obadiah 8Shall I not in that day, saith the LORD, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau?The same stripping of Edom’s vaunted wisdom as verse 7 - the oracle this chapter echoes throughout.
- Genesis 25:23Two nations are in thy womb... and the elder shall serve the younger.The origin of Esau / Edom (vv. 8, 10) - the brother-nation whose long rivalry with Israel stands behind this oracle.
- Psalm 68:5A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.The heart behind verse 11 - care for the orphan and widow even amid the judgment of their nation.
- 1 Corinthians 1:19I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.The principle of verse 7 carried into the Gospel - human wisdom that does not bow to God brought to nothing.
- Jeremiah 25:21Edom, and Moab, and the children of Ammon.Edom among the nations made to drink the cup of judgment (v. 12) - the cup passed to all the peoples.
The Pride of Thine Heart Hath Deceived Thee
- Obadiah 3-4The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee... that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle... thence will I bring thee down.The near-identical oracle against Edom - verse 16 reads almost word for word with Obadiah’s charge.
- Luke 1:51-52He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.The great reversal of verse 16 sung at the dawn of the Gospel - the proud nest brought down, the lowly raised.
- Proverbs 16:18Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.The principle beneath verse 16 - the pride of the heart running just ahead of the fall.
- James 4:6God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.The two postures the chapter sets side by side - the proud heart of verse 16 against the humble one God lifts.
- Isaiah 14:13-15I will ascend into heaven... I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.The same arc as verses 16 and 19 - the highest self-exaltation answered by the deepest fall.
Concerning Damascus · The City of Praise
- Isaiah 17:1The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.An earlier oracle on the same city - the ruin of Damascus that verses 23-27 announce again.
- Amos 1:4But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, which shall devour the palaces of Benhadad.The same fire on the same royal house - the palaces of Benhadad consumed (cf. v. 27).
- Proverbs 29:25The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.The lesson of the “city of praise” (v. 25) - reputation is no refuge; only trust in the LORD is safe.
- John 12:43For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.The danger behind the “city of praise” (v. 25) - renown among people mistaken for favour with God.
- Psalm 20:7Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.The confidence Damascus lacked - courage rooted in the LORD rather than in a city’s strength (vv. 24-26).
Kedar and Hazor · And the Mercy on Elam
- Acts 2:9-11Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites... we do hear them speak in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.The mercy promised to Elam (v. 39) coming to flower - Elamites among the first to hear the Gospel at Pentecost.
- Revelation 7:9a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne.The end of the road begun in verses 6 and 39 - grace gathering a people out of every nation.
- Genesis 10:22The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.Elam among the oldest of the nations (v. 34) - a people at the very edge of Israel’s world.
- Psalm 139:7-10Whither shall I go from thy spirit?... If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea... even there shall thy hand lead me.The truth Kedar and Elam learned (vv. 31-38) - no remoteness lies outside the reach of God.
- John 10:16And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring.The outward reach of the same mercy - grace gathering those beyond the borders, as promised even to Elam (v. 39).