Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · Isaiah Chương 16

But just because this lion is Judah and its government, the summons goes forth to the Moabites, who have fled to Edom, and even to Sela, i.e., Petra ( Wady Musa), near Mount Hor in Arabia Petraea, to which it gave its name, to turn for protection to Jerusalem. “Send a land-ruler's tribute of lambs from Sela desert-wards to the mountain of the daughter of Zion.” This v. is like a long-drawn trumpet-blast. The prophecy against Moab takes the same turn here as in Isaiah 14:32; Isaiah 18:7; Isaiah 19:16., Isaiah 23:18. The judgment first of all produces slavish fear; and this is afterwards refined into loving attachment. Submission to the house of David is Moab's only deliverance. This is what the prophet, weeping with those that weep, calls out to them in such long-drawn, vehement, and urgent tones, even into the farthest hiding-place in which they have concealed themselves, viz., the rocky city of the Edomites. The tribute of lambs which was due to the ruling prince is called briefly car mōshēl - 'eretz . This tribute, which the holders of the pasture-land so rich in flocks have hitherto sent to Samaria (2 Kings 3:4), they are now to send to Jerusalem, the “mountain of the daughter of Zion” (as in Isaiah 10:32, compared with Isaiah 18:7), the way to which lay through “ the desert,” i.e., first of all in a diagonal direction through the Arabah, which stretched downwards to Aelath.

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The advice does not remain without effect, but they embrace it eagerly. ”And the daughters of Moab will be like birds fluttering about, a scared nest, at the fords of the Arnon.” “The daughters of Moab,” like “the daughters of Judah,” for example, in Psalms 48:12, are the inhabitants of the cities and villages of the land of Moab. They were already like birds soaring about (Proverbs 27:8), because of their flight from their own land; but here, as we may see from the expression תהיינה ... והיה , the simile is intended to depict the condition into which they would be thrown by the prophet's advice. The figure (cf., Isaiah 10:14) as well as the expression (cf., Isaiah 17:2) is thoroughly Isaiah's. It is a state of anxious and timid indecision, resembling the fluttering to and fro of birds, that have been driven away from their nest, and wheel anxiously round and round, without daring to return to their old home. In this way the daughters of Moab, coming out of their hiding-places, whether nearer or more remote, show themselves at the fords of the Arnon, that is to say, on the very soil of their old home, which was situated between the Arnon and Wady el-Ahsa, and which was now devastated by the hand of a foe. לארנון מעברות we should regard as in apposition to b e noth Moab (the daughters of Moab), if m a‛bâroth signifies the coast-lands (like ‛ebrē in Isaiah 7:20), and not, as it invariably does, the fords. It is locative in its meaning, and is so accentuated.

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But if Moab does this, and the law of the history of Israel, which is that “a remnant shall return,” is thus reflected in the history of Moab; Isaiah 16:6 cannot possibly contain the answer which Moab receives from Zion, as the more modern commentators assume according to an error that has almost become traditional. On the contrary, the prophecy enters here upon a new stage, commencing with Moab's sin, and depicting the fate of Moab in still more elegiac strains. “We have heard of the pride of Moab, the very haughty ( pride) , his haughtiness, and his pride, and his wrath, the falsehood of his speech.” The future self-humiliation of Moab, which would be the fruit of its sufferings, is here contrasted with the previous self-exaltation, of which these sufferings were the fruit. “ We have heard,” says the prophet, identifying himself with his people. Boasting pompousness has hitherto been the distinguishing characteristic of Moab in relation to the latter (see Isaiah 25:11). The heaping up of words of the same verbal stem (cf., Isaiah 3:1) is here intended to indicate how thoroughly haughty was their haughtiness (cf., Romans 7:13, “that sin might become exceeding sinful”), and how completely it had taken possession of Moab. It boasted and was full of rage towards Israel, to which, so far as it retained its consciousness of the truth of Jehovah, the talk of Moab ( בדיו from בדד = בדא , בטא , to talk at random) must necessarily appear as לא־כן , not-right, i.e., at variance with fact. These expressions of opinion had been heard by the people of God, and, as Jeremiah adds in Jeremiah 48:29-30, by Israel's God as well.

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The beauties of nature and fruitfulness of the land, which come into the possession of any nation, are gifts from the riches of divine goodness, remnants of the paradisaical commencement of the history of man, and types of its paradisaical close; and for this very reason they are not matters of indifference to the spirit of prophecy. And for the same reason, it is not unworthy of a prophet, who predicts the renovation of nature and the perfecting of it into the beauty of paradise, to weep over such a devastation as that of the Moabitish vineyards which was now passing before his mind (cf., Isaiah 32:12-13). “Therefore I bemoan the vines of Sibmah with the weeping of Jazer; I flood thee with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh, that Hךdad hath fallen upon thy fruit-harvest and upon thy vintage.” A tetrastich, the Hebrew equivalent, in measure and movement, of a sapphic strophe. The circumstantiality of the vision is here swallowed up again by the sympathy of the prophet; and the prophecy, which is throughout as truly human as it is divine, becomes soft and flowing like an elegy. The prophet mingles his tears with the tears of Jazer. Just as the latter weeps for the devastated vines of Sibmah, so does he also weep. The form אריּו ך , transposed from ארוּי ך = ארוּ ך (cf., Ewald, §253, a, where it is explained as being a rare “voluntative” formation), corresponds to the elegiac tone of the whole strophe. Heshbon and Elealeh, those closely connected cities, with their luxuriant fields ( sh e demoth , Isaiah 16:8), are now lying in ruins; and the prophet waters them with tears, because hedad has fallen upon the fruit-harvest and vintage of both the sister cities. In other instances the term kâtzı̄r is applied to the wheat-harvest; but here it is used in the same sense as bâtzı̄r , to which it is preferred on account of Isaiah's favourite alliteration, viz., with kaytz (compare, for example, the alliteration of mistor with sēther in Isaiah 4:6). That it does not refer to the wheat-harvest here, but to the vintage, which was nearly coincident with the fruit-harvest (which is called kaytz , as in Isaiah 28:4), is evident from the figure suggested in the word hēdâd , which was the shout raised by the pressers of the grapes, to give the time for moving their feet when treading out the wine (Isaiah 16:10; Jeremiah 25:30). A hēdâd of this kind had fallen upon the rich floors of Heshbon-Elealeh, inasmuch as they had been trodden down by enemies - a Hedad, and yet no Hedad, as Jeremiah gives it in a beautiful oxymoron (Jeremiah 48:33), i.e., no joyous shout of actual grape-treaders.

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The ultimate reason for this restlessness is, that Moab does not know the living God. “And it will come to pass, when it is seen that Moab is weary with weeping upon the mountain height, and enters into its sanctuary to pray, it will not gain anything.” נלאה נראה , a pictorial assonance, such as Isaiah delights in. נראה .ni st is transferred from the Israelitish worship (appearance before God in His temple) to the heathen; syntactically, si apparuerit , etc., with Vav before the apodosis. It would be with the Moabites as with the priests of Baal in the time of Elijah (1 Kings 18:26.).

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