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The other side of the Street


 

Obadiah 1:11

11 On the day that you stood aloof,
    on the day that strangers carried off his wealth
and foreigners entered his gates
    and cast lots for Jerusalem,
    you were like one of them.


Thought for the day – Standing on the Other Side of the Street

Here’s a question for you: ‘what’s the difference between doing harm and watching harm happen?’

Obadiah says, not much. Edom didn’t march on Jerusalem. Verse 11 says they “stood aloof” while strangers carried off the city’s wealth. And then comes the line: “you were just like one of them.”

Edom wasn’t a stranger either. The Hebrew word for brother, ach, runs right through this passage, and it’s the same word Moses used in Numbers 20:14: “This is what your brother Israel says.” These two nations were family. That’s what makes it so raw. The betrayal was like a knife in the back.

 

Then notice the rhythm to verses 12-14: “You should not... you should not... you should not.” It’s like a parent listing everything that went wrong. Don’t gloat. Don’t loot. Don’t block the road for the refugees. It’s a catalogue of the small things we tell ourselves don’t count.

We are called to do no harm and to good to all, the Wesleyan interpretation of love your neighbour. Avoiding evil isn’t the same as standing with the hurting. Proverbs 24:17-18 even warns us that gloating over an enemy’s fall costs us something with God.    

So, who’s your Judah? Who’s been left standing on the road while you watched from the other side?

The good news is that Obadiah ends with the kingdom belonging to the LORD (v. 21). Not Edom’s. Not Babylon’s. Not ours. God’s. And that frees us to be neighbours instead of spectators.

This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0


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