They Will Be Expelled From Edom By Those Who Will At First Appear To Be Their Friends (Obadiah 1:5-9).
Their punishment will be extreme and final, and they will be ousted from their homeland by those who have eaten with them and pretended to be their friends.
“If thieves came to you,
If robbers by night,
(How you are cut off!),
Would they not steal only until they had enough?
If grape-gatherers came to you,
Would they not leave some gleaning grapes?”
How are Esau searched!
How are his hidden treasures sought out!”
The essence of these verses is that when YHWH did search them out, their destruction would be total. Thieves who came seeking them out would only steal until they had had enough, grape-gatherers would leave gleanings, but when YHWH came he would take everything from them. They would be totally ‘cut off'. Nothing would be left. Their treasures would be thoroughly searched out. Note the reference to Edom as ‘Esau', deliberately stressing the relationship with ‘Jacob' (Israel).
“All the men of your confederacy have brought you on your way,
Even to the border.
The men who were at peace with you have deceived you,
And prevailed against you.
Those who eat your bread lay a snare under you.
There is no understanding in him.”
Furthermore this would take place at the hands of those whom they had trusted and with whom they had entered into a confederacy. The idea would appear to be that their fellow-Arabs, having entered into what appeared to be a friendly agreement with them, had chased them out of their own country across the Judean border into the Negeb, having simply deceived them. Indeed such was the perfidy of their friends that they had eaten bread with them and then betrayed them, an almost unheard of thing among Arabs. It demonstrated their so-called allies' total and complete lack of sympathy and understanding. They had clearly been plotting to take over their country.
“Shall I not in that day,
Oracle of YHWH,
Destroy the wise men out of Edom,
And understanding out of the mount of Esau?”
And all these consequences would be the result of the fact that YHWH had destroyed the wisdom and understanding of the wise men of Edom, whose wisdom was proverbial, and of the leadership who ruled over mount Esau (the Edom highlands). This would explain why they had entered into such a foolish alliance.
One example of the wise men of Edom was Eliphaz the Temanite who was one of Job's ‘comforters' (Job 2:11). Teman may well have been a city famed for its ‘wise ones' and its ability to provide ‘the wisdom of the east' (1 Kings 4:30). Another example of a city previously renowned for its ‘wise ones' was Abel in Israel (see 2 Samuel 20:18).
“And your mighty men, O Teman, will be dismayed,
To the end that every one may be cut off from the mount of Esau because of the slaughter.”
And it was not only the wise men of Teman who would be exposed. Their mighty men too would be dismayed. And the consequence was to be that all the Edomites (‘everyone') would be cut off from the mountains of Edom as a result of the fierce genocide carried out against them.
Teman was named after the grandson of Esau (Genesis 36:11), and was connected with early Edomite chieftains (Genesis 36:15; Genesis 36:34; Genesis 36:42). Its prominence comes out in such references as Jeremiah 49:7; Ezekiel 25:13; Amos 1:12; Habakkuk 3:3.
‘Because of the slaughter.' Some would append these words to the following verse but MT attaches it to Obadiah 1:9 and it adds considerably to the flavour of the verse.