Obadiah 1:15

"For the day of Jehovah is near upon all the nations: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee; thy dealing shall return upon thine own head."

"For the day of Jehovah is near upon all nations ..." Note that the subject matter in the section here is no longer the Edomites and their godless behavior. No. It is the conduct of ALL NATIONS that seek not to know and do the will of God that comes into view here. They are wrong, therefore, who make this verse an extended comment on what Edom had done, thus bolstering their denial of the future tense in the previous verses. This verse is an extension of the warnings against Edom, only here it is the world theater which is in focus. "All the nations" are guilty in the large sense of false and deceitful dealing with the people of God, and there is also a "day of Jehovah for them."

"The day of Jehovah ..." Extended comment upon this was written in my remarks on the Book of Hosea, pp. 157-159 (See Hosea 9:4ff), where the origin of such a conception was attributed to God Himself, and not to any of the prophets. As regards which prophet first referred to it, Obadiah, "not Joel or Isaiah, first mentioned it."[18] Every judgment executed in the wrath of God against wicked men and/or nations is "the day of Jehovah" in that particular and for that object of it; but in the cosmic dimensions of the day, "the day of Jehovah" has reference to the final moral reckoning by the entire posterity of Adam at the time of the second advent of our Lord Jesus Christ and the eternal judgment of all people. There have already been many days of Jehovah. It came to the entire world in the instance of the Great Flood; the ancient pagan nations of Assyria, Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, Sidon, Sodom, Gomorrah, etc.; and during the present dispensation, the destruction of Jerusalem, Rome, and perhaps other world-shaking disasters may be understood as other examples of the same "day of Jehovah."

"Thy dealing shall return upon thine own head ..." In the last analysis, the justice of God is retributive. In the final judgment, people shall be rewarded according to what they have done during the present life; and there has never been a true theology that can get rid of this basic truth. Certainly, Paul did not abolish it, for he wrote:

"For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10).