Unlike other prophetic books, Obadiah’s oracle contains no information about the time or place of its origin, nor does it include any autobiographical data about the prophet. The brevity of the superscription matches the brevity of the book, perhaps to focus attention on the message rather than on the prophet himself. The word used to describe Obadiah’s prophecy (“vision”) is a technical term having to do with receiving a revelatory word from God. More than mere human sight, this visionary experience is the result of divine inspiration and implies that the prophet actually saw and heard the communication from Yahweh. This gives him the insight and perception necessary to understand the unveiling of future events. The same expression occurs in Isaiah 1:1 and Nahum 1:1, and the ecstatic vis…