Keywords

Qumran texts, religious education, righteousness, prophecy, ancient scripture

Abstract

Latter-day Saints have frequently used the phrase “saviors on mount Zion” in relation to proxy temple work for the dead. This phrase comes from the twenty-first, and last, verse of Obadiah, a prophetic book in the Old Testament. But many people have little awareness of or experience with the previous twenty verses in the book, nor with the intriguing contextual questions those verses raise for understanding verse 21, with its phrase “saviours shall come up on mount Zion” (KJV1; note the British spelling with a u; used herein only in quotations). Furthermore, there has been little Latter-day Saint discussion of the whole of verse 21 itself, especially regarding how the passive grammar in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) should be dealt with—“those who have been saved/rescued”—as opposed to the active grammar in the traditional Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT)— those who function as saviors on mount Zion—and how the corollary “mount of Esau” impacts our understanding of “mount Zion.”

Original Publication Citation

Dana M. Pike, "Obadiah 1:21: Context, Text, Interpretation, and Application," in Prophets and Prophecies of the Old Testament. Ed. by Aaron Schade, Brian Hauglid, and Kerry Muhlestein (2017 Sperry Symposium; Provo and Salt Lake City: RSC and Deseret Book, 2017), 47-78.