What Does Obadiah 1:12 Mean?
And do not gaze upon the day of your brother, the day he became a foreigner. Do not rejoice over the children of Judah on the day they lost their way. Do not make your mouth large in the day of the narrow place.
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
But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became a stranger; neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction; neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress.THE KEY
The verse calls boasting over a brother’s collapse a way of enlarging your own mouth inside his narrow day.
THE MEANING
Another person’s loss is a day when you can watch, rejoice, or enlarge your voice; the verse names all three as ways of meeting their distress. Even when someone appears foreign or fallen, the text still calls that person “thy brother.” The relationship remains present at the very moment distance and ruin threaten to obscure it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Another person’s pain gives me permission to feel larger, and their estrangement cancels my kinship with them.
THE ROOT
צָרָה
tsarah
GROWS FROM
צרר
tsarar
To bind, press in, or make narrow.
The word for distress carries the image of being pressed into a narrow place. It places the verse’s closing phrase inside the movement from constriction toward spaciousness.
ALSO GROWS
metsar: A narrow place or strait.
מֵצַר
This related word makes distress concrete as a place of constriction.
tsar: Narrow or tight; also an adversary.
צַר
The same word family holds both narrowness and the pressure of an adversary.
נָכְרוֹ
nokhro
GROWS FROM
נכר
nakar
To recognize or distinguish; in this form, to become foreign or be treated as alien.
“foreigner” in this verse is nokhro. The verse holds “thy brother” beside a word of foreignness. Even on the day he seems strange or distant, the bond named by “brother” has not disappeared.
ALSO GROWS
nokhri: A foreigner or stranger.
נָכְרִי
This branch names the alien status suggested by the verse’s wording.
nekar: Foreignness or what is alien.
נֵכָר
It gives language to the distance that can make a brother seem like an outsider.
תַּגְדִּיל פִּיךָ
tagdil pikha
GROWS FROM
גדל
gadal
To grow, become great, or make great.
“make your mouth large” in this verse is tagdil pikha. The Hebrew phrase pictures making the mouth large. Pride becomes an outward enlargement of speech over another’s pain, completing the movement from looking, to rejoicing, to boasting.
ALSO GROWS
gadol: Great or large.
גָּדוֹל
The shared root makes the image of an enlarged mouth explicit.
gedullah: Greatness or majesty.
גְּדֻלָּה
This branch shows the root’s language of greatness behind the boast.
THE PATTERN
Another person’s downfall is not a rightful occasion for enlarging your own joy, contempt, or speech.
Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart leap when he stumbles.Whoever mocks the poor reproaches his Maker, and he who is glad at calamities does not come away clear.Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.THE THREAD
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.Obadiah’s צָרָה (tsarah, distress) and Psalm 118:5’s מֵצַר (metsar, narrow place) belong to the same צרר family. The psalm answers that constriction with a large place, opening the verse’s narrow day into a movement toward spaciousness.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us