The mention of cleverness at the end of verse 7 leads smoothly on to the loss of wisdom in this verse. The verse has the form of a rhetorical question in Hebrew, and this is retained in Revised Standard Version. However, this is one of the places where Good News Translation has judged that a statement conveys the meaning more clearly in English, and Good News Translation has accordingly dropped the question form.
The phrase “on that day” (Revised Standard Version) often means the day of final judgment, but here it refers to the day of Edom’s punishment. Good News Translation makes this explicit by saying On the day I punish Edom. One aspect of this punishment is the loss of Edom’s clever men, whom the Lord will destroy. Edom was famed for its wisdom, learned no doubt from the East through trading contacts.
In the Hebrew, the single verb “destroy” (Revised Standard Version) is followed by two objects that are parallel to each other in structure, “wise men out of Edom” and “understanding out of Mount Esau.” Good News Translation has retained the parallelism but has modified it to make it sound more natural in English. First, “Mount Esau” is a synonym for Edom, and in Good News Translation both are expressed by Edom in the opening line of the verse. The expression “Mount Esau” is found only in the book of Obadiah, and it may not be an actual name. Edom is sometimes called by the name of Esau, the ancestor of the people, and the term here may simply mean “the mountains of Edom.” The term is also used in verses 9, 19, and 21.
Second, Good News Translation has used two verb phrases to make the lines more neatly parallel, and thus says destroy their clever men and wipe out all their wisdom. As in verse 5, wipe out is an idiomatic expression in English. The meaning here can be expressed as “I will cause them to lose (or, forget) all their wisdom.”
If wisdom or knowledge is difficult to translate in some languages, it is all right to take this line as parallel to the previous one, meaning “people who know a lot” or “people who are wise.” In this case, of course, a translator may feel that it will be better to state this in only one line instead of in two lines that say the same thing.
In this verse the Hebrew phrase “says the LORD” (Revised Standard Version) is not represented in Good News Translation. In the interests of more natural English structure, Good News Translation includes it at the beginning of the section, in verse 2, rather than in verses 4 and 8 as in the Hebrew (see the comments on verse 2). Many translators will also find it more natural to do this. Some will also find that it fits the patterns of their language to repeat “says the Lord” at the end of the section after verse 9, and if so, this is acceptable translation procedure.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on the Book of Obadiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .