Obadiah 1:19 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And they of the South shall possess the mount of Esau - The Church was now hemmed in within Judah and Benjamin. They too were to go into captivity. The prophet looks beyond the captivity and the return, and tells how that original promise to Jacob Genesis 28:14 should be fulfilled; “Thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt break North to the West, and to the East, and to the North, and to the South; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Hosea and Amos had, at this time, prophesied the final destruction of the kingdom of Israel. Obadiah describes Judah, as expanded to its former bounds including Edom and Philistia, and occupying the territory of the ten tribes. “The South” , i. e., they of the “hot” and “dry” country to the South of Judah bordering on Edom, “shall possess the mountains of Esau,” i. e., his mountain country, on which they bordered. And “the plain,” they on the West, in the great maritime plain, the “shephelah,” should spread over the country of the Philistines, so that the sea should be their boundary; and on the North, over the country of the ten tribes, “the fields of Ephraim and the fields of Samaria.” The territory of “Benjamin” being thus included in Judah, to it is assigned the country on the other side Jordan; “and Benjamin, Gilead.”