Obadiah 1:15

"The day of the Lord" here is a future day in which God will reverse the fortunes of Israel and the nations (cf. Obadiah 1:8). "The day of the Lord," a common term in the Prophets, refers generally to any time when God intervenes in human affairs to accomplish His will. The day that Obadiah announced will be the day when God establishes His rule in human affairs, namely, when Jesus Christ returns to rule and reign on the earth. Obadiah said that day was approaching. As Edom and the other nations had done to Israel, so God would pay them back with precisely the same judgment (lex talionis; cf. Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21; Galatians 6:7).

"God shows not only his sovereignty over all people by not permitting unrequited wickedness, but also his justice by not permitting punishment to exceed crime." [Note: D. Baker, p. 38.]

Edom’s punishments that resulted in her demise as a nation before the Second Coming were part of God’s judgment on her, but the prophet saw all God’s judgments on Edom and the nations, which will culminate in the eschaton (end times). All the prophets had difficulty seeing the proximity of the future events that they predicted to one another (cf. 1 Peter 1:11).

"The opening line of 1 Peter 1:15 therefore constitutes the core of Obadiah’s prophecy. It provides a theological framework for the preceding verses: the localized disasters befalling Edom and Jerusalem are not merely isolated incidents in a remote and insignificant theater of war, for they mark the footsteps of the Lord himself as he approaches to set up a ’kingdom that will never be destroyed’ (Daniel 2:44). And the following verses are essentially a commentary on the implications of that impending ’day.’" [Note: Armerding, p. 353.]

"Edom is presented as the paradigm of all the nations." [Note: D. Baker, p. 39.]