)
This is the first and last time throughout the Bible, that we find
this Obadiah mentioned. We find the same name elsewhere, but not
the same person. It is a common Jewish name, Obadiah, and means, I
believe, the servant of the Lord.
All we know of the man is contained in this chapter. We do not read
what became of him afterwards. He vanishes out of the story as
quickly as he came into it, and, as we go on through the chapter and
read of that grand judgment at Carmel between Elijah and the priests
of Baal, and the fire of God which came down from heaven, to shew
that the Lord was God, we forget Obadiah, and care to hear of him no
more.
And yet Obadiah was a great man in his day. He was, it seems, King
Ahab's vizier, or prime minister; the second man in the country
after the king; and a prime minister in those eastern kingdoms had,
and has now, far greater power than he has in a free country like
this. Yes, Obadiah was a great man in his day, I doubt not; and
people bowed before him when he went out, and looked up to him, in
that lawless country, for life or death, for ruin or prosperity.
Their money, and their land, their very lives might depend on his
taking a liking toward them, or a spite against them. And he had
wealth, no doubt, and his fair and great house there among the
beautiful hills of Samaria, ceiled with cedar and painted with
vermilion, with its olive groves and vineyards, and rich gardens
full of gay flowers and sweet spices, figs and peaches, and
pomegranates, and all the lovely vegetation which makes those
Eastern gardens like Paradise itself.
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