The Seleucid ruler Antiochus XII Dionysus had initially gained support from Ptolemaic forces.

The last Seleucid ruler of any military reputation, even if it is on a local scale, he has made several raids into the territories of the Jewish Hasmonean kings, and has tried to check the rise of the Nabataean Arabs.

A battle against the latter turns out to be initially successful, until the young king is caught in a melee and killed by an Arab soldier.

Upon his death the Syrian army flees and mostly perishes in the desert.

Obodas is killed also; he is worshiped as a deity after his death.

He is buried in the Negev, at a seasonal camping ground for Nabataean caravans traveling along the early Petra-Gaza road (Darb es-Sultan) in the third-to-late second century BCE.

The place is renamed in the slain king’s honor, Avdat, where a temple platform (the acropolis) is soon created along the western edge of the plateau; it is to become the most important historic city on the Incense Route after Petra.

Obodas is succeeded by his brother Aretas III.