Isaiah 16 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
late 700s BC, with a closing note giving the destruction a three year deadline
Location
Moab east of the Dead Sea, especially the vineyard country around Sibmah and Heshbon, with envoys sent across to Jerusalem
Audience
the people of Judah, and by extension Moabite refugees seeking shelter in Judah
Situation
Moabite refugees are pictured sending tribute lambs to the ruler in Jerusalem and pleading for asylum, and Judah is urged to hide the fugitives rather than betray them. The prophet then weeps over Moab's ruined vineyards and its useless prayers at the hilltop shrines.
Key Background
Sending lambs to a ruler was the recognised way a vassal state paid tribute, and the Moabite Stone from around 840 BC records Moab paying exactly this kind of livestock tribute to Israel, so the gesture is a formal act of submission. Moab was famous for its vineyards and wine terraces on the high plateau, which is why grape harvest imagery carries the weight of the lament. Hilltop shrines, called high places, were open air worship platforms common across the region, and the note that Moab's prayers there achieve nothing is a comment on the limits of its own gods.
Send as tribute to the ruler of the land, from through the desert, to the mountain of daughter
Like a pushed from its nest, so are Moab's daughters at the crossings of the
"Give us your counsel, make a decision! Cast your like night at the height of noon. Hide the — don't betray the ones who run."
"Let my outcasts find shelter among you, Moab. Be a hiding place for them from the face of the destroyer." When the oppressor is gone, when destruction has ended, when the one who has vanished from the land —
Then a throne will be set up in love, and on it will sit — in — a judge who seeks and is quick to do what is right.
We have heard of Moab's — so deep, so deep — his overblown pride, his swagger, his rage, his that amounts to nothing.
So Moab will wail — everyone wailing for Moab. For the of they will groan, utterly crushed.
The of have withered, the vines of Sibmah too. The rulers of nations trampled down her choice branches — branches that once reached to Jazer and sprawled into the desert, whose shoots spread out and the
So I weep with Jazer for the vines of Sibmah. I drench you with my tears, Heshbon and Elealeh, because the has fallen on your summer fruit and your harvest.
Joy and gladness are stripped from the orchards. No one sings in the vineyards, no one shouts. No one out in the presses — I have silenced the
So my for Moab like the strings of a lyre, my insides ache for Kir-hareseth.
When Moab shows up at the and wears herself out, when she comes to the she for to pray, it will do nothing.
This is the word spoke about Moab in the past.
But now Yahweh speaks: "Within three years — counted exactly, a — Moab's will be humiliated, with all her massive population. What's left will be tiny, shriveled, nothing much at all."