The Two Obadiahs
Written Format*
Obadiah. The name might not mean much to you. It’s the shortest book in the Bible. More of a rant than a full book, really, against the people of Edom, by Obadiah, an Edomite who converted to Judaism and served King Ahab in the Israelite court. Ahab is remembered as a wicked king, mostly because of his wife, Jezebel, who promoted the worship of Ba’al, and persecuted prophets of the Israelites God. That’s where Obadiah comes in.
I Kings:18
Much later, in the third year, the word of GOD came to Elijah: “Go, appear before Ahab; then I will send rain upon the earth.” Thereupon Elijah set out to appear before Ahab. The famine was severe in Samaria. Ahab had summoned Obadiah, the steward of the palace. (Obadiah revered GOD greatly.
When Jezebel was killing off the prophets of GOD, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them, fifty to a cave, and provided them with food and drink.)
And Ahab had said to Obadiah, “Go through the land, to all the springs of water and to all the wadis. Perhaps we shall find some grass to keep horses and mules alive, so that we are not left without beasts.” They divided the country between them to explore it, Ahab going alone in one direction and Obadiah going alone in another direction. Obadiah was on the road, when Elijah suddenly confronted him. [Obadiah] recognized him and flung himself on his face, saying, “Is that you, my lord Elijah?”
“Yes, it is I,” he answered. “Go tell your lord: Elijah is here!”
But he said, “What wrong have I done, that you should hand your servant over to Ahab to be killed?
As the ETERNAL your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom to which my lord has not sent to look for you; and when they said, ‘He is not here,’ he made that kingdom or nation swear that you could not be found. And now you say, ‘Go tell your lord: Elijah is here!’
When I leave you, the spirit of GOD will carry you off I don’t know where; and when I come and tell Ahab and he does not find you, he will kill me. Yet your servant has revered GOD from my youth. My lord has surely been told what I did when Jezebel was killing the prophets of GOD, how I hid a hundred of the prophets of GOD, fifty to a cave, and provided them with food and drink.
And now you say, ‘Go tell your lord: Elijah is here.’ Why, he will kill me!”
Elijah replied, “As GOD of Hosts lives, whom I serve, I will appear before him this very day.”
Obadiah went to find Ahab, and informed him; and Ahab went to meet Elijah.
When Ahab caught sight of Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?”
He retorted, “It is not I who have brought trouble on Israel, but you and your father’s House, by forsaking the commandments of GOD and going after the Baalim. Now summon all Israel to join me at Mount Carmel, together with the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”
Ahab sent orders to all the Israelites and gathered the prophets at Mount Carmel.
Elijah goes on to do battle with the prophets of Ba’al, and defeats them on Mount Carmel, demonstrating the power of God for all to witness and setting the people of Israel on a path to redemption. Obadiah, well he goes on to rant about the continuing dangers of the Edomites, the sons Esau, and prophecies that God will destroy them for their wickedness, in favor of the sons of Israel.
There are a lot of theories about who the Edomite actually are. The Babylonians. The Romans. Christians generally. The Nazis. And of course there are modern parallels. None of that really matters to me. The Edomites are a metaphor most likely, for existential threats to the Jewish people. Which is why it’s so interesting that another Obadiah played a key role in interceding against a different existential threat against the Jewish people, and one of our most prized possessions, our sacred text.
Obadiah ben Yaakov was born in Cesena, Italy in 1475, the son of a famous rabbi who quickly proved a prodigy himself. He’s known today by his family name, because he went on to be the most prominent member of his family. In fact, in Rome, where the Italian Jewish community retains its own distinct identity, a legacy of its 2000 year history, prayer books still include Rabbi Obadiah’s commentary on Pirkei Avot.
Sforno, as you might know him, was sort of the Maimonides of his community. He was a prominent Jewish scholar. He wrote a treatise undermining the logic of non-Jewish philosophers who denied the existence of God, and making a Jewish argument for the existence of God. He dedicated it to the Catholic French King Henry II. Sforno studied medicine and befriended Samuel Zarfati, the Jewish scholar who served as the Pope’s private doctor. And when the Christian scholar Johannes Reuchlin came to Rome to study Hebrew and Aramaic, Cardinal Grimani—the Vaticans leading scholar—sent him to Sforno for private instruction.
Years later, when Reuchlin has returned to Germany, a movement to convert the countries Jews was gaining steam, one that aimed to destroy the very heart of Jewish life, by burning our sacred texts, excluding those included in Christian Bible, which basically left the Talmud. They sought to recruit Reuchlin, who resisted, having grown fond of Jewish texts while studying the language in Rome. In 1510 he was appointed to a newly formed commission by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I to judge the fate of the Jews’ texts.
Reuchlin remembered his time studying with Sforno, using these same texts as a means to learn ancient languages. In his review of the case, Reuchlin took care to emphasize that sacred Jewish texts contained little to no demeaning references to Christiandom, and that the ones which did were of little actual significance to the Jewish community. So he proposed to Maximilian that none of the texts be burned, or banned, for a period of ten years. Maximilian agreed, and thus our second Obadiah, Sforno, succeeded from afar in saving the Jewish people of Germany from an existential threat—the burning of our sacred texts.
And with that, I wish you a Shabbat Shalom. Thanks for listening.
*Written formats may differ slightly from recorded versions
