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 of the address is hardly conceivable; and the parenthetical explanation of the last three clauses of Oba 1:1 is at variance with their contents, which do not form by any means a subordinate thought, but rather the main thought of the following address. No other course remains, therefore, than to take these introductory words by themselves, as Michaelis, Maurer, and Caspari have done, in which case כה אמר does not announce the actual words of Jehovah in the stricter sense, but is simply meant to affirm that the prophet uttered what follows jussu Jehovae, or divinitus monitus, so that כה אמר is really equivalent to diber זה הדּבר אשׁר דּבּר in Isa 16:13, as Theodoret has explained it. לאדום, not “to Edom,” but with reference to, or of, Edom. On the occurrence of Yehōvâh after ‘Adōnâi, see the comm. on Gen 2:4. What Obadiah saw as a word of the Lord was the tidings heard from the Lord, and the divine message sent to the nations to rise up for war against Edom. The plural שׁמענוּ (we have heard) is communicative. The prophet includes himself in the nation (Israel), which has heard the tidings in him and through him. This implies that the tidings were of the greatest interest to Israel, and would afford it consolation. Jeremiah (Jer 49:14) has removed the pregnant character of the expression, by introducing the singular שׁמעתּי (I have heard). The next clause, “and an ambassador,” etc., might be taken, as it has been by Luther, as a statement of the import of the news, namely, that a messenger had been sent; inasmuch as in Hebrew a sentence is frequently co-ordinated with the preceding one by Vav cop., when it ought really to be subordinated to it so far as the sense is concerned, from a simple preference for the parallelism of the clauses. But the address gains in force, if we take the clause as a co-ordinate one, just as it reads, viz., as a declaration of the steps already taken by the Lord for carrying out the resolution which had been heard of by report. In this case the substance of the report is not given till the last clause of the verse; the summons of the ambassador sent among the nations, “to rise up for war against Edom,” indicating at the same time the substance of the report which Israel has heard. The perfect shullâch with qâmets in the pause, which is changed by Jeremiah into the less appropriate passive participle kal, corresponds to שׁמענוּ, and expresses in prophetic form the certainty of the accomplishment of the