Obadiah

An otherwise unknown prophet of Judah

held by the plain reading of the superscription, and the position of nearly all commentary, ancient and modern, since the book supplies no identifying detail of any kind

The Obadiah of Ahab's household (1 Kings 18:3-4)

held by a rabbinic identification preserved in the Babylonian Talmud at Sanhedrin 39b, compiled in Babylonia by roughly AD 500

The passage is homily rather than evidence about the book, and it is worth reading for what it hears in the oracle. Rabbi Isaac is quoted there to the effect that Obadiah, who lived among two wicked people and did not learn from their deeds, was the right man to prophesy against Esau, who lived among two righteous people and did not learn from theirs, and the same discussion calls the prophet an Edomite convert. Christian and Jewish commentators alike treat the identification as an ancient reader's comment, since the century that suits Ahab's steward is not the century most readers assign to the oracle.

Shortly after Jerusalem fell to Babylon in 586 BC

held by the majority reading, held by Leslie C. Allen (The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 1976), Hans Walter Wolff (Obadiah and Jonah, English translation 1986), and Paul R. Raabe (Obadiah, Anchor Bible, 1996)

The case is the scale of what verses 11 to 14 assume and the company the book keeps. Three other prophets and one psalm charge Edom with exactly this conduct at exactly that event: 'Because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance' (Ezekiel 25:12), 'As thou didst rejoice over the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee' (Ezekiel 35:15), the cup passed to the daughter of Edom in Lamentations 4:21, and the prayer of Psalm 137:7 against 'the children of Edom' who said 'Rase it, rase it, Even to the foundation thereof.'

The ninth century BC, in or after the reign of Jehoram of Judah

held by Carl Paul Caspari (Der Prophet Obadja ausgelegt, 1842), E. B. Pusey (The Minor Prophets with a Commentary, 1860), Carl Friedrich Keil (Biblical Commentary on the Minor Prophets, English translation 1868), and among modern conservatives Gleason L. Archer (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, 1964)

The case rests on two facts and one silence. Edom broke away from Judah under Jehoram, 'In his days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah, and made a king over themselves' (2 Kings 8:20). In the same reign raiders reached the capital, 'and they came up against Judah, and brake into it' (2 Chronicles 21:17), carrying off the royal household's goods and the king's own sons. The silence is that Obadiah never names Babylon or Nebuchadnezzar, where Jeremiah's Edom oracle sits inside a book that names them constantly. Readers on this side also note Obadiah's placement fourth among the Twelve, beside eighth-century prophets rather than exilic ones.