Moab's Wine Is Poured Out

Nebo is the town beneath the mountain where Moses died (Deuteronomy 34:1). On the Moabite Stone, King Mesha boasts of taking Nebo from Israel around 840 BC. Kiriathaim, “twin towns”, is a city Mesha says he built. Misgab means “the high fort”, and may be a stronghold rather than a town’s proper name.

The verse runs on puns. “In Heshbon they have devised” sets the town’s name beside chashvu, devised; “thou shalt be cut down, O Madmen” pairs Madmen with tiddommi, be silenced. Heshbon, once Sihon’s capital, had become a base for plotting against Moab.

Horonaim means “two hollows”. The Moabite Stone records Chemosh telling Mesha, “Go down, fight against Horonaim”. “Spoiling and great destruction”, shod and shever, is the same pair Jeremiah used of Judah’s ruin in 4:20 and 6:7.

“Her little ones have caused a cry to be heard” reads in the Greek “as far as Zoar”, the Hebrew words for little ones and Zoar being close in spelling. Zoar was the small town Lot reached from Sodom (Genesis 19:22), at the southern end of the Dead Sea.

Isaiah 15:5 has this line almost word for word, one of many this oracle shares with Isaiah’s Moab chapters. The Hebrew says weeping goes up “with weeping”: those climbing the road to Luhith are crying as they go, one wave of it after another.

“The heath in the wilderness” is ar’ar, a stunted desert shrub, the same word as in 17:6, where the man who trusts in man is “like the heath in the desert”. It also sounds like Aroer, the town in verse 19. The Greek reads “like a wild ass in the desert”.

Chemosh was Moab’s national god; Solomon built him a high place on the hill facing Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:7). Conquerors carried off the images of defeated gods as trophies, and Isaiah 46:1–2 pictures Babylon’s own gods loaded on beasts for exile.

“The valley” and “the plain” are Moab’s two landscapes: the Jordan valley down by the Dead Sea, and the mishor, the high tableland north of the Arnon. Between them they cover the whole country, lowland and upland.

“Give wings” translates tsits, a word whose meaning here is uncertain. Elsewhere it means a flower or a plate of gold; some ancient and modern translators read “give salt to Moab”, as a ruin was sown with salt, or “set up a gravestone for Moab”. The King James takes it as wings for flight.

“Deceitfully” is remiyyah, slackly or negligently, doing the work half-heartedly. The shape recalls Saul, who kept back what he was told to destroy (1 Samuel 15:9); that is an echo readers have heard, not a reference the verse makes. The curse applies to whoever carries out this particular sentence.

Zephaniah 1:12 used the same image for the complacent of Jerusalem, “men that are settled on their lees”. Moab paid tribute to Assyria and was never deported, unlike Israel. “From his youth” reaches back to Moab’s beginnings, a nation born in the history of Lot (Genesis 19:37).

“Wanderers” translates tso’im, from a verb meaning to tip or tilt; modern translations have “tilters”, men who pour. The “bottles” are nevalim, earthenware jars rather than glass. The pourers tip the wine out and then smash the jars.

Bethel was where Jeroboam set up a golden calf (1 Kings 12:29), a shrine that did not save Israel from Assyria. Set in parallel with the god Chemosh, Bethel may here name a deity: papyri from Elephantine show a god called Bethel worshipped in the Persian period.

“How say ye” is the challenge of 8:8, “How do ye say, We are wise?” Moab’s boast is put in its own mouth. The Moabite Stone is such a boast in stone, Mesha describing victories won against Israel by the help of Chemosh.

“Gone up out of her cities” is obscure; the Hebrew may mean her cities have gone up, in smoke. The title “the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts” appears also over Egypt (46:18) and over Babylon (51:57), the same King over three kingdoms.

“Calamity… near to come” and “hasteth fast” echo the Song of Moses: “the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste” (Deuteronomy 32:35). The ruin is close in time and quick in motion.

The “staff” and “rod” are sceptres, symbols of rule, as in Ezekiel 19:11, “strong rods for the sceptres of them that bare rule”. “How” is eikhah, the word that opens a funeral lament and gives Lamentations its Hebrew title. The neighbours are invited to use it.

Dibon was Mesha’s capital, and the Moabite Stone was found there in 1868 by a missionary who saw it lying in the ruins. The city is told to “come down from thy glory, and sit in thirst”, a royal city made to sit on the ground like a beggar.

Aroer stood on the rim of the Arnon gorge (Deuteronomy 2:36), beside the King’s Highway, the main north-south road; the Moabite Stone says Mesha built Aroer and “made the road in the Arnon”. Anyone fleeing south would pass it. Its people stand at the roadside and ask for news.

The Arnon, today’s Wadi Mujib, is a great canyon cutting down to the Dead Sea, long treated as Moab’s northern border (Numbers 21:13). “Tell ye it in Arnon” sends the news along its crossings, where travellers would carry it south.

Jahazah and Mephaath were among the cities allotted to the Levites in Reuben’s territory (Joshua 21:36–37). At Jahaz Israel defeated Sihon (Numbers 21:23), and Mesha says he took it back. Holon’s location is unknown. The places of an old dispute between Israel and Moab head the list.

Beth-diblathaim means “house of the two fig cakes”. Numbers 33:46 names an Almon-diblathaim as one of Israel’s camps on the way to the Jordan, and the Moabite Stone lists a Beth-diblathaim among Mesha’s building works.

Beth-gamul, “house of the camel”, appears only here. Beth-meon is the Baal-meon that Reuben’s tribe rebuilt in Numbers 32:38, and that Mesha claims to have rebuilt too; it is probably modern Ma’in, south-west of Madaba.

Kerioth housed a sanctuary of Chemosh: Mesha says he dragged an Israelite altar hearth “before Chemosh in Kerioth”. Amos 2:2 speaks of “the palaces of Kirioth”. This Bozrah is a Moabite town, not the Edomite Bozrah of 49:13.

The horn is the animal’s weapon and a common image of strength (Psalm 75:10, “all the horns of the wicked also will I cut off”). The broken arm is the image Ezekiel uses of Pharaoh (Ezekiel 30:21). Both describe a power disabled rather than killed outright.

The cup of wine has already been handed round: in 25:21 Moab is among the nations made to drink the cup of God’s fury, told to “be drunken, and spue” (25:27). “Wallow” is literally splash or clap, the drunk falling into his own vomit.

“Was he found among thieves?” recalls 2:26: “As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed.” “Skippedst for joy” is literally “thou didst shake thyself”, a head-shaking or bobbing gesture of contempt, as in Psalm 44:14. Zephaniah 2:8 also records Moab’s taunts.

Rock doves nest in the sheer walls of gorges like the Arnon, in crevices no predator can reach. The Song of Songs uses the same image for a hidden beloved, “my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock” (2:14). Leaving the cities for the cliffs is the only safety left.

Six words for pride in one verse, most built on the same Hebrew root, ga’ah: pride, proud, loftiness, arrogancy, pride, haughtiness of heart. The sound is repetitive on purpose. The line is borrowed from Isaiah 16:6, where the same pile of words appears.

“His lies” are baddim, empty talk or idle boasting. “Wrath” is evrah, arrogant fury, the rage of overreaching. The verse, like the last, follows Isaiah 16:6; God knows the swagger and declares it will come to nothing.

Kir-heres, “wall of potsherds”, is Moab’s mountain fortress, today’s Kerak. It was on its wall that a Moabite king sacrificed his eldest son when besieged by Israel and Judah (2 Kings 3:25–27). Isaiah 16:7 and 16:11 spell it Kir-hareseth and Kir-haresh.

Sibmah’s vines were famous, and Isaiah 16:8–9 laments them in almost the same words. Their tendrils spread to “the sea”, the Dead Sea. “The sea of Jazer” is puzzling, since Jazer lay inland; Isaiah’s parallel reads simply “unto Jazer”, and the extra “sea” may be a copyist’s repetition.

The “shouting” is hedad, the rhythmic cry of men treading grapes in the press. In 25:30 God himself “shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes”, against the nations. Here the treaders’ hedad dies away in Moab, and only the other kind is left.

“An heifer of three years old” may be a place name, Eglath-shelishiyah, as some translations take it in the parallel Isaiah 15:5. The waters of Nimrim are generally placed in the south-east of the Dead Sea region, perhaps the Wadi Numeira. The cries run from north to south across the whole land.

“High places” are bamot, open-air shrines. The Moabite Stone begins by commemorating a high place Mesha built for Chemosh at Qarhoh. The oracle ends the whole business: the sacrificer and the incense burner are silenced together.

The “pipes” are chalilim, reed flutes played at funerals. A later Jewish rule required even the poorest man to hire at least two flute players and a wailing woman for his wife’s burial (Mishnah Ketubot 4:4). A heart sounding like pipes is a heart playing a dirge.

The rites run from head to foot: shaved head, clipped beard, gashed hands, sackcloth at the waist. Isaiah 15:2–3 has the same list for Moab. The northern pilgrims of 41:5 came to Jerusalem with shaven beards; mourning looked much the same on both sides of the Jordan.

“A vessel wherein is no pleasure” is the phrase Jeremiah used of King Jehoiachin: “Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure?” (22:28). Moab is broken and thrown aside with the same words as Judah’s exiled king.

“Turned the back” is the posture of flight, showing the enemy the back of the neck; Egypt’s soldiers did the same at Carchemish (46:5). “A dismaying” is mechittah, a terror to look at. The mocker has become the thing others stare at.

The eagle, nesher, is probably the griffon vulture, huge and fast. Deuteronomy 28:49 warned of a nation “as swift as the eagle flieth”. The same line is used of Edom in 49:22; the Greek translation of this chapter lacks the eagle line here.

“Kerioth” can also be read as a common noun, “the towns are taken”. The heart “as the heart of a woman in her pangs” is one of Jeremiah’s repeated images for terror (4:31, 49:22, 50:43), men of war reduced to the helplessness of labour.

Moab does vanish as a nation. Josephus (Antiquities 10.181) says Nebuchadnezzar subdued Ammon and Moab in his twenty third year, about 582 BC, and after the Persian period no independent Moab appears again. The reason is given once more: he magnified himself against the LORD.

Fear, pit and snare are pachad, pachat and pach, three words that sound almost alike. The line comes from Isaiah 24:17, where it closes over the whole earth. Heard aloud, it has the sound of a trap snapping shut.

Continuing Isaiah 24:18, the verse has the shape of Amos 5:19, where a man flees a lion and meets a bear, then leans on a wall and is bitten by a snake. “The year of their visitation” is Jeremiah’s phrase for the reckoning of Anathoth (11:23) and of the false prophets (23:12).

The lines are quoted from an ancient song in Numbers 21:28: “there is a fire gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon”. The last phrase takes up Balaam’s oracle, that a star from Jacob “shall smite the corners of Moab” (Numbers 24:17). Moab’s old songs are sung against it.

This follows Numbers 21:29 closely: “Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity.” The book returns Moab’s sentence to the words of Israel’s first encounter with it.

The restoring phrase, shuv shevut, is used for Moab here, Ammon (49:6) and Elam (49:39), but not for Philistia, Edom or Babylon. “Thus far is the judgment of Moab” is an editor’s closing line, like 51:64. The Greek translation lacks verses 45 to 47 altogether.