of the dependent passage may be preferable to that of the original. On this latter, and more probable, View (taken by Wellhausen, Nowack and Marti) there is no need to separate Obad. 1-7 from 10-14. The immediate occasion of the prophecy[1] was doubtless the pressure of nomadic Arabs (“the men of thy covenant,” “the men of thy peace,” v. 7) upon Edom, which had resulted, by 312 B.C. at latest, in the occupation by Arabs of Petra, the chief city of the Edomites (Wellhausen, p. 214). But the desolation of Edom has already been accomplished in the time of Malachi i. 1-5, a passage belonging to the earlier half of the 5th century. We may, therefore, with Wellhausen, Nowack and Marti, assign Obadiah 1-14 to the same period.
The remainder of the book, vers. (15) 16-21, must belong to a later date. That the book of Obadiah, short as it is, is a complex document might have been suspected from an apparent change of view between vers. 1-7 and vers. 15 f. In the former verses Esau is destroyed by his allies, and they occupy his territory, but in the latter he perishes with the other heathen in the day of universal retribution, he disappears before the victorious advance of Israel, and the southern Judaeans occupy his land.[2] The ideas of this passage belong to the eschatological outlook of later centuries, but afford no data for chronology. The conceptions of the “rescued ones” (R.V. “those that escape,” v. 17), of the sanctity of Zion, of the kingship of Yahweh, are the common property of the post-exilic writers. The restoration of the old borders of Israel and the conquest of Edom and the Philistines are ideas as old as Amos ix., Isa. xi. 14; but such passages represent this conquest as a suzerainty of Israel over its neighbours, as in the days of David, while in Obadiah, as in other later books, the intensified antithesis—religious as well as political—between Judah and the surrounding heathen finds its expression in the idea of a consuming judgment on the latter,—the great “day of Yahweh.” The chief interest of the book of Obadiah lies in its references to the historical relations between Israel and Edom. From the point of view of religion, we may notice the emphasis on the doctrine of strict retribution (vers. 10 f., 15 b) which remains applicable to other peoples, even when its inadequacy as a complete theory of providence has been slowly and painfully discovered in the case of Israel itself.
Literature.—Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten3 (1898); Nowack, id. (1897, 2nd ed., 1904); G. A. Smith, The Book of the Twelve, vol. ii. (1898); J. A. Selbie, art. “Obadiah,” in Hastings’s Dict. of the Bible, iii. 577-580 (1900); Cheyne, id. in Ency. Biblica, iii. c. 3455-3462 (incorporating the article of W. Robertson Smith in the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit.) (1902); Marti, Dodekapropheton (1903). For a sketch of the history of the Edomites, see Nöldeke’s article “Edom” in the Ency. Biblica. (W. R. S.; H. W. R.*)
OBAN, a municipal and police burgh and seaport of Argyllshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 5374. It is situated 113 m. N.W.
of Glasgow by the Caledonian railway via Stirling and Callander,
and about the same distance by water via the Crinan Canal.
The fine bay on which it lies is screened from the Atlantic gales
by the island of Kerrera (412 m. long by 2 m. broad), which
practically converts it into a land-locked harbour. Being also
sheltered from the north and east by the hills at the foot of which
it nestles, the town enjoys an exceptionally mild climate for its
latitude. The public buildings include the Roman Catholic
pro-cathedral, erected by the 3rd marquis of Bute, the county
buildings and two hospitals. It is the centre of tourist traffic
for western Argyllshire and the islands. Oban was a small
village at the date of Johnson’s visit during his Hebridean tour;
in 1786 it became a government fishing station; it was made
a burgh of barony in 1811 and a parliamentary burgh in 1832.
With Ayr, Campbeltown, Inveraray and Irvine (the Ayr burghs)
it unites to send one member to parliament.
At the north end of the bay stands the ruin of Dunolly Castle, the old stronghold of the Macdougalls of Lorne, whose modern mansion adjoins it. In the grounds is a huge conglomerate rock called the Dog Stone (Clach-a-choin), from the legend that Fingal used to fasten his favourite dog Bran to it. About 3 m. N.E. are the ruins of Dunstaffnage Castle. It was here that the “Stone of Destiny,” now contained in the base of the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey, was kept before its removal to Scone. At the south end of the island of Kerrera stand the ruins of Gylen Castle, an old fortalice of the Macdougalls.
OBBLIGATO, or Obligato, in the modern sense, a musical term (adopted from the Italian, and strictly meaning obligatory or binding) for an instrumental accompaniment to a musical composition which, while in one way independent, is included by the composer on purpose and in a prescribed form, instead of being left to the discretion (ad libitum) of a performer.
OBELISK (Gr. ὀβελίσκος, diminutive of ὀβελός, a spit), a form
of monumental pillar; and also the term for a bibliographical
reference-mark in the form of a dagger. The typical Egyptian
obelisk is an upright monolith of nearly square section, generally
10 diameters in height, the sides slightly convex, tapering upwards
very gradually and evenly, and terminated by a pyramidion
whose faces are inclined at an angle of 60°. Obelisks were usually
raised on pedestals of cubical form resting on one or two steps,
and were set up in pairs in front of the entrance of temples.
Small obelisks have been found in tombs of the age of the Old
Kingdom. The earliest temple obelisk still in position is that of
Senwosri I. of the XIIth Dynasty at Heliopolis (68 ft. high).
A pair of Rameses II. (77 and 75 ft. high respectively) stood at
Luxor until one of them was taken to Paris in 1831. Single
ones of Tethmosis I. and Hatshepsut (109 ft. high) still stand
at Karnak and remains of others exist there and elsewhere in
Egypt. Colossal granite obelisks were erected by only a few
kings, Senwosri I. in the Middle Kingdom and Tethmosis I.,
Hatshepsut, Tethmosis III. and Rameses II. of the Empire.
Smaller obelisks were made in the Saite period. The Romans admired them, and the emperors carried off some from their original sites and caused others to be made in imitation (e.g. that for Antinous at Benevento): twelve are at Rome, one in Constantinople; two, originally set up by Tethmosis III. at Heliopolis, were taken by Augustus to adorn the Caesareum at Alexandria: one of these, “Cleopatra’s Needle,” was removed in 1877 to London, the other in 1879 to New York. Such obelisks were probably more than mere embellishments of the temples. The pyramidions were sheathed in bright metal, catching and reflecting the sun’s rays as if they were thrones of the sunlight. They were dedicated to solar deities, and were especially numerous at Heliopolis, where there was probably a single one sacred to the sun of immemorial antiquity. The principal part of the sun-temple at Abusir built by Neuserré of the Vth Dynasty appears to have been in the shape of a stumpy obelisk on a vast scale, only the base now remains, but hieroglyphic pictures indicate this form. The hieroglyph of some other early sun temples shows a disk on the pyramidion 
. The material employed for the great obelisks was a pink granite from the quarries of Syene, and in these quarries there still remains, partially detached, an example 70 to 80 ft. long. The largest obelisk known is that in the piazza of St John Lateran at Rome; this had been set up by Tethmosis III. at Heliopolis in the 15th century B.C., was brought over from Egypt by Constantine the Great and erected in the Circus Maximus, being ultimately re-erected in 1552 by Pope Sixtus V. It was 105 ft. 9 in. high, including the pyramidion, and its sides measured 9 ft. 10 in. and 9 ft. 8 in. respectively. On the base of the magnificent
- ↑ Wellhausen and Nowack regard vv. 8, 9 as a later addition, intended to apply vv. 1-7 to the future; so Marti, who groups with these verses 15a, because of the common reference to “the day of Yahweh.”
- ↑ The Judaeans are addressed in v. 16 (“as ye have drunk”), not the Edomites. Verse 20 anticipates that the exiles from northern Israel will occupy Phoenician territory, whilst those from Jerusalem “which are in Sepharad” will occupy the southern districts in the Messianic restoration. “Sepharad” has been connected with various places, e.g. Saparda in south-west Media (G. A. Smith), and Çparda of Darius in the Behistun inscription (Robertson Smith); whilst, according to Winckler (K.A.T.3 p. 301), it is the name, from the Persian period onwards, for Asia Minor. Many of the Jews were doubtless sold as slaves by Nebuchadrezzar. Lydia was a great slave market, and Asia Minor was a chief seat of the Diaspora at an early date (comp. Gutschmidt, Neue Beiträge, p. 77), so that “Sepharad” in itself does not supply ground for Hitzig’s argument that Obadiah was written in the Greek period, when we read of many Jews being transplanted to Asia Minor (Jos. Ant. xii. 3).
