^5 (A)The Lord has prepared his sword in heaven, and now it will strike Edom, those people whom he has condemned to destruction. ⁶ His sword will be covered with their blood and fat, like the blood and fat of lambs and goats that are sacrificed. The Lord will offer this sacrifice in the city of Bozrah; he will make this a great slaughter in the land of Edom. ⁷ The people will fall like wild oxen and young bulls, and the earth will be red with blood and covered with fat. ⁸ This is the time when the Lord will rescue Zion and take vengeance on her enemies.

⁹ The rivers of Edom will turn into tar, and the soil will turn into sulfur. The whole country will burn like tar. ^10 (B)It will burn day and night, and smoke will rise from it forever. The land will lie waste age after age, and no one will ever travel through it again. ¹¹ Owls and ravens will take over the land. The Lord will make it a barren waste again, as it was before the creation. ¹² There will be no king to rule the country, and the leaders will all be gone.^{[a] 13} Thorns and thistles will grow up in all the palaces and walled towns, and jackals and owls will live in them. ¹⁴ Wild animals will roam there, and demons will call to each other. The night monster^[b] will come there looking for a place to rest. ¹⁵ Owls will build their nests, lay eggs, hatch their young, and care for them there. Vultures will gather there, one after another.

¹⁶ Search in the Lord's book of living creatures and read what it says. Not one of these creatures will be missing, and not one will be without its mate. The Lord has commanded it to be so; he himself will bring them together. ¹⁷ It is the Lord who will divide the land among them and give each of them a share. They will live in the land age after age, and it will belong to them forever.

Prophecy against Edom

^12 (A)The Sovereign Lord said, “The people of Edom took cruel revenge on Judah, and that revenge has brought lasting guilt on Edom. ¹³ Now I announce that I will punish Edom and kill every person and animal there. I will make it a wasteland, from the city of Teman to the city of Dedan, and the people will be killed in battle. ¹⁴ My people Israel will take revenge on Edom for me, and they will make Edom feel my furious anger. Edom will know what it means to be the object of my revenge.” The Sovereign Lord has spoken.

Jeremiah and the Rechabites

35 ^(A)When Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord said to me, ² “Go to the members of the Rechabite clan and talk to them. Then bring them into one of the rooms in the Temple and offer them some wine.” ³ So I took the entire Rechabite clan—Jaazaniah (the son of another Jeremiah, who was Habazziniah's son) and all his brothers and sons— ⁴ and brought them to the Temple. I took them into the room of the disciples of the prophet Hanan son of Igdaliah. This room was above the room of Maaseiah son of Shallum, an important official in the Temple, and near the rooms of the other officials. ⁵ Then I placed cups and bowls full of wine before the Rechabites, and I said to them, “Have some wine.”

⁶ But they answered, “We do not drink wine. Our ancestor Jonadab son of Rechab told us that neither we nor our descendants were ever to drink any wine. ⁷ He also told us not to build houses or farm the land and not to plant vineyards or buy them. He commanded us always to live in tents, so that we might remain in this land where we live like strangers. ⁸ We have obeyed all the instructions that Jonadab gave us. We ourselves never drink wine, and neither do our wives, our sons, or our daughters. ^9-10 We do not build houses for homes—we live in tents—and we own no vineyards, fields, or grain. We have fully obeyed everything that our ancestor Jonadab commanded us. ¹¹ But when King Nebuchadnezzar invaded the country, we decided to come to Jerusalem to get away from the Babylonian and Syrian armies. That is why we are living in Jerusalem.”

^12-13 Then the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, told me to go and say to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, “I, the Lord, ask you why you refuse to listen to me and to obey my instructions. ¹⁴ Jonadab's descendants have obeyed his command not to drink wine, and to this very day none of them drink any. But I have kept on speaking to you, and you have not obeyed me. ¹⁵ I have continued to send you all my servants the prophets, and they have told you to give up your evil ways and to do what is right. They warned you not to worship and serve other gods, so that you could go on living in the land that I gave you and your ancestors. But you would not listen to me or pay any attention to me.

Edom

^11 (A)The Lord says, “The people of Edom have sinned again and again, and for this I will certainly punish them. They hunted down their relatives,^[a] the Israelites, and showed them no mercy. Their anger had no limits, and they never let it die. ¹² So I will send fire upon the city of Teman and burn down the fortresses of Bozrah.”

¹ This is the prophecy of Obadiah—what the Sovereign Lord said about the nation of Edom.

The Lord Will Punish Edom

Reasons for Edom's Punishment

The Lord's Love for Israel

^2 (A)The Lord says to his people, “I have always loved you.”

But they reply, “How have you shown your love for us?”

The Lord answers, “Esau and Jacob were brothers, but I have loved Jacob and his descendants, ³ and have hated Esau and his descendants. I have devastated Esau's hill country and abandoned the land to jackals.”

⁴ If Esau's descendants, the Edomites, say, “Our towns have been destroyed, but we will rebuild them,” then the Lord will reply, “Let them rebuild—I will tear them down again. People will call them ‘The evil country’ and ‘The nation with whom the Lord is angry forever.’”

⁵ The people of Israel are going to see this with their own eyes, and they will say, “The Lord is mighty even outside the land of Israel!”

The Lord's Judgment on Edom

^7 (A)This is what the Lord Almighty said about Edom: “Have the people of Edom lost their good judgment? Can their advisers no longer tell them what to do? Has all their wisdom disappeared?

²² Wisdom was not found by the Canaanites. It has not been discovered by the Edomites ²³ although they search after knowledge. The way to Wisdom has not been found by the merchants of Merran and Tema or by those who relate fables or by any others who seek understanding.