a paraphrase of obadiah's vision
this is prophet Obadiah’s vision, which showed him God’s opinion of Edom, the city of Esau.
God has sent us a message, and a person is telling all the nations: get ready! we are going to war against Edom.
listen up, people of Edom: i am going to make you small among the nations and make everybody hate you. you got too proud and it made you foolish. you think that because you live high up on the mountains nobody can touch you, nobody can bring you down. you can fly like an eagle and make a nest in the stars, but i can still touch you, i can bring you down, because i am God.
when thieves come in the night, they only take the things they want. when grape pickers come to pick grapes, they always miss a few. but you will be destroyed! every single thing that Esau owns will be found and taken, just to fuck you over. all your allies will force you out of your country. all your friends will lie to you and take your power. the people you feed will set a trap for you, and you won't even realise it. when these things happen, i will destroy all the wise people in edom. i will destroy them, and your soldiers will be terrified, and everyone living in your mountains will be killed.
you killed your brother Jacob. Then your people did bad things to his people. because of that, you will be covered in shame and destroyed forever. you stood and watched strangers entered Jerusalem and stole the riches, and divided the land among themselves. you did nothing, so you are just as bad. the people in Jerusalem were in a bad place. the people of Judah were killed. laughing at them was wrong. talking about how great you are as they suffered was wrong. you should not have invaded them. you should not have enjoyed their pain. you should not have stolen from them. you should not have waited to kill the ones who tried to escape. you should not have captured the ones left alive.
soon God is going to judge every nation. all the bad things you have done will happen to you. you will be punished, a head for a head. you drank on my holy mountain and made the water dirty. all the nations will keep drinking, they will drink so much, and then they will disappear. but the people on mount Zion who stayed with me will not disappear. i will make the mountain holy again, and i will give Jacob's people the land. Jacob's people and Joseph's people will be like a fire, and Esau's people will be dry grass. Esau will burn and nothing will survive. believe me—i am God.
people from the south will live in Esau's mountains. and people from the plains will live in the land of the Philistines, and on the farms of Ephraim and Samaria, and Gilead will belong to the people of Benjamin. these people exiled from Israel, will take their land back, all the way from the north and the south. the good people who were saved on mount Zion will rule over the mountains of Esau, and the rule will honour God.