This verse continues the theme of the Lord’s people regaining the land that had been taken from them after the fall of Jerusalem, especially the land taken by the Edomites. Verse 17 states the basic fact that the people of Israel will regain their lost territory, and verses 18-20 give the details of how this will happen. Appropriately, the details begin with the Edomites, the people this book has been mostly concerned with.
In Hebrew the verse opens with two lines that are parallel in form and overlapping in meaning, as shown by the literal translation of Revised Standard Version. Good News Translation has combined these two lines into one, as it often does elsewhere, and stated the full meaning in a single clause, The people of Jacob and of Joseph will be like fire. Here Jacob stands for the people of Judah, and Joseph for the people of Israel. The two names together mean the survivors of both kingdoms, that is, the entire Jewish nation.
Since Joseph was historically Jacob’s son, it may sound strange in some languages to refer to his descendants as though they are a different group of people from his father’s descendants. Even in languages that do not have this problem, it is unlikely that many readers will know what these names are meant to refer to. Therefore some translators may prefer to translate as “the people of Judah and Israel” or even as “the people of the northern and southern parts of Israel.”
Fire is used as a picture of the Lord’s anger, and the Lord’s people are seen as the agents through whom the divine punishment is carried out. This picture is ancient and widespread (compare Exo 15.7; Isa 10.17; 29.5, 6; Nahum 1.6, 10; Mal 4.1; Matt 3.12; Luke 3.17) and should not be difficult to retain in translation, since the destructive power of fire is known to all societies.
The fuel for this fire will be the people of Esau, that is, the Edomites (see comments on verse 6), who will be destroyed as fire burns stubble. Stubble is the dry and useless stalks left in the fields after the wheat has been harvested. It burns very readily and thus offers an easily understood picture of quick and complete destruction. If stubble itself is not known in any area, the translator can compare Edom to dry grass, or anything of this sort which readers will recognize as something that burns easily.
No descendant of Esau will survive: the completeness of the destruction is emphasized by the word survive, which echoes “survivors” (Revised Standard Version) in verse 14. The Edomites had handed over the survivors of Judah to the Babylonians. When the time came for the descendants of those survivors to carry out the Lord’s punishment on Edom, “there shall be no survivor” (Revised Standard Version). Esau will be left with No descendant.
The verse is rounded off with a reminder that this is not just a man’s nationalistic dream, but the purpose of the Lord. In the Hebrew here as in verse 15, the reference to the Lord is in the third person, and again Good News Translation translates this in the first person, I, the LORD, have spoken, since the whole of verses 2-21 are understood as the direct words of the Lord.
It may be unnatural in some languages to put a statement like this in the middle of a person’s speech. Thus, since the Lord is still speaking in the following verses, it may not sound right for him to say I … have spoken in verse 18. The meaning is that these things will happen because they are the will of the Lord, and it can therefore be translated as something like “I declare that this must happen,” or “All of this will happen according to my will.”
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 .