That's possible. What Joomla event are you trying to use? You should be able to use Joomla content events and have access to all the data it provides, which includes the full article object. Joomla content event documentation is as follows.
docs.joomla.org/Plugin/Events/Content
So for example onContentAfterSave would work. Condition against the context to be sure it's an article (believe this should be com_content.article) and against isNew to make sure it's an edit and not newly created. It would then run whatever code you've supplied in your code action.