What Does Obadiah 1:10 Mean?
From the violence against your brother Jacob, shame will cover you, and you will be cut off to the ages.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.THE KEY
Violence against a brother ends by covering the aggressor in shame and severing the bond.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the one who directs violence against a brother: shame covers the one who commits it, and the bond is severed. Kinship keeps the injury inside a relationship, so the consequence reaches beyond the immediate act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that kinship shields an aggressor from consequence dissolves here: shame and lasting severance fall on the one who commits the violence.
THE ROOT
חֲמַס
ḥămas
GROWS FROM
חמס
To act violently or wrongfully; violence and oppression.
The English “violence” can suggest force alone; חָמָס also names wrongful injury and oppression. The verse frames the act as harm within kinship, not merely a clash between opponents.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāmās: Violence, wrong, oppression (noun).
חָמָס
This noun form shares the verse’s root and shows that the charge includes wrongful harm, not only physical force.
ḥāmas: To act violently or wrong another (verb).
חָמַס
The verb names the action behind the verse’s accusation: doing violence to another.
וְנִכְרַתָּ
venikhreta
GROWS FROM
כרת
To cut or sever.
“cut off” in this verse is venikhreta. The verse’s ending names a severance. The same root appears in “cut a covenant” and in כְּרִיתוּת, a word for severance or divorce, so the language of cutting can describe both binding a relationship and formally breaking one.
ALSO GROWS
kārat berit: To cut a covenant; to make a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb used for cutting off also appears in the idiom for making a covenant, placing severance beside the language of binding relationship.
keritut: Severance; divorce.
כְּרִיתוּת
This derived noun names a formal relationship broken, illuminating the relational force of being cut off.
בּוּשָׁה
būshāh
GROWS FROM
בוש
To be ashamed, confounded, or disappointed.
The root names the condition of being confounded or disappointed, while the verse makes shame the covering of the one who commits the violence. The consequence rests on the aggressor, not the brother who is harmed.
ALSO GROWS
bōsh: To be ashamed or confounded.
בּוֹשׁ
This verb shares the root and shows shame as a state that overtakes a person.
būshāh: Shame or disgrace.
בּוּשָׁה
This noun is the form used in the verse, where shame covers the one responsible for the violence.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats violence against a brother as a rupture that reaches beyond the immediate injury into death or severance.
And Cain said to Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.Thus says the LORD, for three rebellions of Edom, and for four, I will not turn it back; because he pursued his brother with the sword, and ruined his compassion; his anger tore without end, and he kept his fury forever.Everyone who hates his brother is a human-slayer. And you know that no human-slayer has the life of the ages remaining in him.THE THREAD
And I will raise up my covenant with you; never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.Both verses use כרת (karat), “cut” or “sever,” in the phrase translated “cut off.” Genesis places that same root in a covenant promise preserving all flesh, while Obadiah names an enduring severance; together they reveal the contrast between preservation and being cut away.
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