Isaiah 15:1-9--An Oracle Concerning Moab

Isaiah 15
English Standard Version

An Oracle Concerning Moab
15 An oracle concerning Moab.

​Because Ar of Moab is laid waste in a night,
    Moab is undone;
because Kir of Moab is laid waste in a night,
    Moab is undone.
2 He has gone up to the temple, and to Dibon,
    to the high places to weep;
over Nebo and over Medeba
    Moab wails.
On every head is baldness;
    every beard is shorn;
3 in the streets they wear sackcloth;
    on the housetops and in the squares
    everyone wails and melts in tears.
4 Heshbon and Elealeh cry out;
    their voice is heard as far as Jahaz;
therefore the armed men of Moab cry aloud;
    his soul trembles.
5 My heart cries out for Moab;
    her fugitives flee to Zoar,
    to Eglath-shelishiyah.
For at the ascent of Luhith
    they go up weeping;
on the road to Horonaim
    they raise a cry of destruction;
6 the waters of Nimrim
    are a desolation;
the grass is withered, the vegetation fails,
    the greenery is no more.
7 Therefore the abundance they have gained
    and what they have laid up
they carry away
    over the Brook of the Willows.
8 For a cry has gone
    around the land of Moab;
her wailing reaches to Eglaim;
    her wailing reaches to Beer-elim.
9 For the waters of Dibon are full of blood;
    for I will bring upon Dibon even more,
a lion for those of Moab who escape,
    for the remnant of the land.

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Next on the list of messages to the enemies of Israel is an oracle to the nation of Moab.  Let me say here as I have not said already that it's unclear whether these oracles were meant to be messages sent to these nations (almost certainly Isaiah did not travel to all these nations to deliver these messages himself) or if they were simply meant for the people of God to hear as encouragement that God saw everything evil that had been done to them and He was going to make everything right--sometimes by destroying a wicked nation, other times by saving them from themselves and turning them into a righteous nation.

To trace the issues between Moab and Israel, we have to go back all the way to Abraham and Lot and Lot's escape from Sodom and Gomorrah when Lot's daughters had husbands that stayed behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  This left them ashamed and without hope for descendants, so they both schemed to make Lot drunk and make themselves pregnant by him while he was so drunk he wouldn't know what was going on (or possibly was passed out).  God cursed the children of this incest which became the Ammonites and the Moabites (though God used a Moabite woman, Ruth, to marry Boaz, the father of Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of King David, the forefather of the Messiah.  However, it is time for the chickens to come home to roost and God is declaring judgment on this nation that has maligned and mistreated the Israelites for centuries.

God says that their great cities will be destroyed in a single night and the nation would be undone because of it.  The people would show all the signs of mourning--shaved heads, shaved beards, wearing sackcloth, and gathering together in their temples for funeral services to question their gods as to why they did not or could not stop this and why this was happening to them.

Everything that was beautiful about Moab has been destroyed and its people become refugees, but the LORD says that He will bring a "lion" (maybe a symbol of Babylon) to devour the remnant.  They should not think that they have escaped judgment simply because they survived the first assault.  The LORD promised to destroy Moab because of what they did at Peor to try to make the LORD destroy His people.  He has given them generations to repent, but they have not.  Now it is time for judgment to fall upon them.