Bible Strands
Obadiah 1:5
“If thieves came to you, if robbers by night—oh, how you will be ruined—would they not steal only what they wanted? If grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave some gleanings?
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD speaks to Edom through the prophet Obadiah, immediately after declaring that prideful heights will be brought down.
The words — The Hebrew אֵיךְ ('eikh) literally means "how!" and introduces the rhetorical shock of ruin, while נִדְמֵיתָה (nid.Mei.tah) literally means "you will be destroyed."
The thread — The prophet adapts the rhetorical structure of grape gatherers leaving gleanings from Deuteronomy 24:21 and Jeremiah 49:9 to frame Edom's coming desolation.
Why it lands — The text demands the reader acknowledge that Edom will suffer total, inescapable loss rather than the partial plundering typical of thieves or harvesters.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
If thieves came to thee, if robbers by night, (how art thou cut off!) would they not have stolen till they had enough? if the grapegatherers came to thee, would they not leave some grapes?
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 24:21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you must not go over the vines again. What remains will be for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.
- Jeremiah 49:9 If grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave some gleanings? Were thieves to come in the night, would they not steal only what they wanted?
- 2 Samuel 1:19 “Your glory, O Israel, lies slain on your heights. How the mighty have fallen!
- Isaiah 17:6 Yet gleanings will remain, like an olive tree that has been beaten—two or three berries atop the tree, four or five on its fruitful branches,” declares the LORD, the God of Israel.
- Lamentations 1:1 How lonely lies the city, once so full of people! She who was great among the nations has become a widow. The princess of the provinces has become a slave.
- Isaiah 14:12 How you have fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the ground, O destroyer of nations.
- Isaiah 24:13 So will it be on the earth and among the nations, like a harvested olive tree, like a gleaning after a grape harvest.
- Jeremiah 50:23 How the hammer of the whole earth lies broken and shattered! What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!
- Micah 7:1 Woe is me! For I am like one gathering summer fruit at the gleaning of the vineyard; there is no cluster to eat, no early fig that I crave.
- Zephaniah 2:15 This carefree city that dwells securely, that thinks to herself: “I am it, and there is none besides me,” what a ruin she has become, a resting place for beasts. Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.