The life of St Obadiah
While the kingdom around him gave itself over to the worship of Baal, Obadiah kept faith with the God of his fathers in secret, and when Queen Jezebel set out to hunt down every prophet still loyal to the Lord, he risked his own safety to hide a hundred of them in caves, keeping them supplied with food and water through the worst of the persecution.
Later tradition connects him to an episode from the life of Elijah, identifying him as the army captain sent to bring Elijah before the king, spared by God's mercy where two earlier detachments before him had been consumed by fire called down through the prophet's own prayer. Whether or not that identification is exact, Obadiah is remembered as having left his position at court afterward to follow Elijah, and in time he received a prophetic gift of his own. His book, the shortest and fourth among the Twelve Minor Prophets, looks ahead to the salvation that would one day extend even to the Gentile nations, and to a Savior who would come forth from Zion. He was buried in Samaria.
