Obadiah - Ron Dart

I have, over the last few decades, been taken and held by the fine life and writings of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and Dan Berrigan. I have a lengthy correspondence with Dan’s brother, Phil Berrigan. I have pondered, for decades, the points of similarity yet also difference between Merton, Day and Berrigan. Jim Forest (a friend) and closer friend with Merton, Day and Berrigan (having written biographies of all three) has gone further than most on telling their pilgrimages and highlighting their trail intersections.

Jim’s recent biography of Dan Berrigan, At Play in the Lion’s Den: A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan (2017) is a tome worth the reading and doing so many times. I was taken, though, by the fact that, for about 20 years (1990-2010) Dan wrote a variety of poetic exegetical books on the Hebrew prophets (minor and major) in the Hebrew Canon or Old Testament. Many who are keen on heeding prophetic literature (and its relevance for our time) often turn to the more academic genre of Walter Wink or Walter Brueggemann. But, Dan Berrigan has potency in his reading and application of the Hebrew prophets that goes beyond Wink and Brueggemann. And, to answer an earlier question, Dan Berrigan wrote much more, in an explicit way, on the Jewish prophetic and historical books than did Thomas Merton or Dorothy Day—this is one area in which they had different commitments.

I have been slowly working through Berrigan’s Minor Prophets, Major Themes (1995) the last few weeks. Berrigan illuminates the writings and insights of the 12 Minor Prophets in varied depth and detail, lingering longer with some, shorter with others. The reading, interpretation and political application of the prophets cannot be missed. There is no doubt that Minor Prophets, Major Themes is a must read for a mature understanding of the prophets from an ethical, historical and political perspective. Obadiah is the shortest of the minor prophetic books but the themes cannot be missed----Edom-Esau is a ruthless and violent nation, injustice rules the realm and God’s people have often been the victims of such cruelty (the tale continues today, the Holocaust the fuller version). But God will rise up, like a warrior, and defend his nation and people, Edom-Esau will be conquered and defeated in a not to be forgotten way: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, pound of flesh for pound of flesh. Obadiah is, in many ways, a forerunner of what we today would call Christian Zionism and a sort of right-wing just war theory. And, God is used by Obadiah to justify such a position. How did Dan Berrigan interact with such a prophet?

Needless to say, Berrigan is ill at ease with Obadiah’s warlike and hawkish tendencies. How does such a position square with the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes? Has Obadiah truly heard and interpreted God aright? Or, like Jonah, does he see the Jewish god as a tribal god who exists for the Jews and to punish those who dare oppose the Jews? Jonah experienced a temporary and transient conversion of sorts but, by book’s end, he has slipped into a pout and pity me party.

There is more to Jonah than Obadiah, but Berrigan’s final paragraph on this thin and single page book is worth the pondering.

     Obadiah, like most of us, is in great need of Bible study.

     He has God all wrong, a God cut to his own cloth, his proclivity to ire,

 his lacerating need of a vindication that borders on vengeance.

     And then his strength.  He knows the principality of empire, and its

 hardly fetching ways, so accurately, so truthfully!

     Shall we say of him—part prophet, part darkness?

Dan Berrigan could be seen as a 20^thcentury Christian prophet. Obadiah is viewed as a minor Jewish prophet. Berrigan has dared to question both text and prophet from a higher ethic, an ethic that transcends ethnicity, nation and land, an ethic that is not about war and violence, vindictiveness and vengeance. Whom shall we hear and why? There are those who heed and follow both trails and tendencies—such pathways do lead to different destinations—one to the God of Jesus Christ (this being Trinity Sunday), the other to a Molech of sorts.

Amor Vincit Omnia

Ron Dart              

Comments

[Brad Jersak]

My thoughts on Obadiah:

1. The repeated series of "you should not have" is a powerful rhetorical tool leading to the climax in which we sense, "Your day is coming!" And while the 'enemy' may have never heard the prophecy, Obadiah's readers were meant to overhear it as a word of hope. A new covenant read would need to redirect our eyes to what constitutes the enemy that Christ has or will overthrow. Thus, in Patristic fashion, I recall one OT prof (of the Brevard Childs school) preaching this at cancer, at divorce, at war and at death itself. So without precluding the reality of an enemy, in Christ, we reject directing violent vindication against the human enemy other, but nevertheless proclaim, "Your day is coming" to all that which oppresses humanity.

2. In light of this re-minting of Obadiah in canonical context, the pairing of Obadiah back to back with Jonah is significant, cautioning us against resentment against the God who loves our enemies and would use us to avert their destruction. To the one drunk on Obadiah's vengeance, Jonah would feel like cold water in the face ... or the face in cold water and a fish's belly.