Isaiah: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
15:1 MASA MO-AV KI BE LEIL SHUDAD AR MO'AV NIDMAH KI BE LEIL SHUDAD KIR MO'AV NIDMAH
מַשָּׂא מוֹאָב כִּי בְּלֵיל שֻׁדַּד עָר מוֹאָב נִדְמָה כִּי בְּלֵיל שֻׁדַּד קִיר מוֹאָב נִדְמָה
KJ (King James translation): The burden of Moab. Because in the night Ar of Moab is laid waste, and brought to silence; because in the night Kir of Moab is laid waste, and brought to silence;
BN (BibleNet translation): The pronouncement upon Mo-Av. That on the night that the capital city of Mo-Av is laid to waste, so will the land of Mo-Av be brought to ruin; that on the night that the walls of the capital of Mo-Av are laid to waste, so will the land of Mo-Av be brought to ruin.
Yesha-Yah now turns his attention to Mo-Av (Moab), prophesying the devastation of Ar and Kir by night, though I have chosen to treat AR and KIR by their meanings - "the city", and "the wall" - rather than inventing them as cities. As per my link, the "capital city" was Karak, which today is al-Karak (الكرك), and in the 12th century CE was the site of a major Crusader battle.
(The map shows the Mosaic journey, ending at Avel-Shitim, which is just to the north of the northern Mo-Avi border. Mo-Av runs along the east side of the Yam Ha Melach - the Dead Sea - bordering Edom at its south.)
15:2 ALAH HA BAYIT VE DIYVON HA BAMOT LE VECHI AL NEVO VE AL MEY-DEVA MO-AV YEYELIL BE CHOL RO'SHAV KARCHAH KOL ZAKAN GERU'AH
עָלָה הַבַּיִת וְדִיבֹן הַבָּמוֹת לְבֶכִי עַל נְבוֹ וְעַל מֵידְבָא מוֹאָב יְיֵלִיל בְּכָל רֹאשָׁיו קָרְחָה כָּל זָקָן גְּרוּעָה
KJ: He is gone up to Bajith, and to Dibon, the high places, to weep: Moab shall howl over Nebo, and over Medeba: on all their heads shall be baldness, and every beard cut off.
BN: He has gone up to the shrine, and is lamenting his woe in the high places; on Mount Nevo, and at Mey-Deva, Mo-Av is howling; as every man's head is nothing but baldness, so every beard is shaven.
BAYIT: Like AR and KIR, BAYIT is not the name of a town, but the word for a "house", and used for any religious shrine - the Temple itself, in Yeru-Shala'im, was Beit Mikdash, "the consecrated house". But here it could be any shrine.
DIYVON: The root means "to pine", and no doubt from the rest of the verse that this is what the "uprooted" (see the last chapter for that key word) people of Mo-Av were now doing as they witnessed the destruction of their land. But Numbers 32:34 tells us that there was an actual town in Mo-Av, on the northern shore of the River Arnon, named Diyvon, restored by the Beney Gad and renamed by them as Diyvon-Gad (Numbers 33:45), though Joshua 13:7 ff has the Beney Gad and the Beney Re'u-Ven "divide their inheritance", with Diyvon now falling into the territory of the Beney Re'u-Ven.
Having said which, the sense of the sentence makes DIYVON a transitive verb, not a noun; whence my translation.
RAMOT: The plural of RAMAH, for which see the link. And if it is the town that is being named, it is not in fact named here as DIVYON anyway, but as DIVYON HA RAMOT, which makes a splendid connection with the BAYIT. RAMOT are "high places", and we have numerous examples throughout the Tanach of mountain shrines, even village-shrines in the mountains, of which none was more famous than the one in which the Prophet Shemu-El was born, and later built his Yeshiva, Ramatayim Tsophim (see 1 Samuel 1:1).
NEVO: See the link.
MEY-DEVA: Likewise can be found in the Re'u-Ven/Gad division; see my note at Joshua 13:9.
BE CHOL RO'SHAV KARCHAH KOL ZAKAN GERU'AH: Are they tearing their hair out, metaphorically? Or is their destruction the result of some kind of plague of alopecia? I ask (tongue-in-cheekily) because, under Mosaic Law, a mourner may not cut his hair nor shave during the period of "avelut" that follows the death of a family member: so these are definitely not covenant-bound Beney Gad or Beney Re'u-Ven, but "pagan" Beney Mo-Av. But there is also the strange tale of David's ambassador to Nachash of the Beney Amon in 2 Samuel 10:4 - might the destruction of Mo-Av have been caused by its northern neighbour Amon, and this a part of the process of demeaning the conquered?
One last thought, and probably this should be in my notes to Exodus rather than here: is there a verbal link between Nov, Nevo and Nevi? The first a shrine on the northern hills of Yeru-Shala'im, destroyed by Sha'ul after it gave refuge to David. The second the mountain of our current verse. A Nevi, or sometimes Navi, was one of the words for a "Prophet"; and based on the link, yes, the three names were probably connected.
15:3 BE CHUTSOTAV CHAGRU SAK AL GAGOTEYHA U VI RECHOVOTEYHA KULOH YEYELIL YORED BA BECHI
בְּחוּצֹתָיו חָגְרוּ שָׂק עַל גַּגּוֹתֶיהָ וּבִרְחֹבֹתֶיהָ כֻּלֹּה יְיֵלִיל יֹרֵד בַּבֶּכִי
KJ: In their streets they shall gird themselves with sackcloth: on the tops of their houses, and in their streets, every one shall howl, weeping abundantly.
BN: In their streets they gird themselves with sackcloth; on their housetops, and in their streets, every one howls, weeping profusely.
SAK... YEYELIL: sackcloth and wailing confirms mourning. The English word "sackcloth" comes from this, and should be hyphenated: sack-cloth.
GAGOTEYHA...RECHOVOTEYHA continues the naming of the parts of the city, and thereby confirms that AR and KIR in verse 1 were not the names of towns. In Biblical times, as we know from the tale of David and Bat-Sheva (2 Samuel 11, but click here), the flat rooves of houses were their equivalent of today's patios, and used as sleeping-quarters for animals as well as humans. RECHOV means "broad place", though in modern Ivrit it has become the word for "street"; mostly, in the Tanach, it means the plaza, the main square immediately upon entry to the city at the gate (see for example Genesis 19:2 and Judges 19:20 - and then tell me if those two aren't versions of the same story!)
Why BA BECHI and not BA VECHI? see verse 5.
15:4 VA TIZ'AK CHESHBON VE EL'ALEH AD YAHATS NISHM'A KOLAM AL KEN CHALUTSEI MO-AV YARIY'U NAPHSHO YAR'AH LO
וַתִּזְעַק חֶשְׁבּוֹן וְאֶלְעָלֵה עַד יַהַץ נִשְׁמַע קוֹלָם עַל כֵּן חֲלֻצֵי מוֹאָב יָרִיעוּ נַפְשׁוֹ יָרְעָה לּוֹ
KJ: And Heshbon shall cry, and Elealeh: their voice shall be heard even unto Jahaz: therefore the armed soldiers of Moab shall cry out; his life shall be grievous unto him.
BN: And Cheshbon cries out, and El-Aleh; their voice is heard, even to the point of trembling; therefore the armed men of Mo-Av cry aloud; his soul is faint within him.
CHESHBON: And now add three more layers of complexity to this question of towns-or-not. Go back to Numbers 32, where we saw the division of the "inheritance" of Re'u-Ven and Gad. Go to verse 3. The text names Cheshbon, and also El-Aleh (though not Yahats, to which I shall return shortly); as it will again at verse 37. Did you notice that the map names the region, not as Mo-Av at all, but as Gilead, which in Yehudit is Gil'ad. See the link, and follow it down to the quote from Deuteronomy 3:12-14, which tells us that the land was neither Gil'ad nor Mo-Av, but Bashan (though my link to CHESHBON gives it to the Amorites!). And finally go back to verse 37, and did you notice that it claims that Re'u-Ven "built" Cheshbon and El-Aleh. Small matters of historical change, usually by war and conquest: the link to Cheshbon gives the chronology as accurately as we know it.
YAHATS: Or Jahaz in the English rendition. So, now, go to Numbers 21:23, where Sichon the king of the Amorites refuses Yehoshu'a's request for safe-passage through his land, and engages him in battle, but is "trampled" to defeat - at Yahats! King of the Emorites - to give him back his correct pronunciation - not Moabites, not Gileadites, not Bashanites. Though that still does not confirm whether YAHATS was the name of the place, or simply what happened there: from the root YAHATS, "to trample".
And if any of this is correct, where does it leave the two and a half tribes who chose their "inheritance" on the east side of the Yarden - half of Menasheh as well as Gad and Re'u-Ven. Had they already been absorbed and assimilated into Mo-Av, or Amon, or Bashan, or Edom, long before the Assyrian invasion in the 720s? An interesting Jewish take on this question can be found here.
15:5 LIBI LE MO-AV YIZ'AK BE RIYCHEHA AD TSO'AR EGLAT SHELISHIYAH KI MA'ALEH HA LUCHIT BI VECHI YA'ALEH BO KI DERECH CHORONAYIM ZA'AKAT SHEVER YE'O'ERU
לִבִּי לְמוֹאָב יִזְעָק בְּרִיחֶהָ עַד צֹעַר עֶגְלַת שְׁלִשִׁיָּה כִּי מַעֲלֵה הַלּוּחִית בִּבְכִי יַעֲלֶה בּוֹ כִּי דֶּרֶךְ חוֹרֹנַיִם זַעֲקַת שֶׁבֶר יְעֹעֵרוּ
BN: My heart cries out for Mo-Av; her refugees have fled as far as Tso'ar, a heifer of three years old; for they go up weeping by the ascent of Luchit; and on the road to Choronayim they raise up a cry of destruction.
Remember that Mo-Av was the name of Lot's grandson, fathered on one of his daughters, precisely in Tso'ar, themselves refugees, after the destruction of the Cities of the Plain left them thinking they were the only survivors of global destruction (Genesis 19:37). King David's great-grandmother Rut (Ruth) was a Moabitess, and it was into Mo-Av that the tribes of Re'u-Ven and Gad had been swallowed up somewhere in the previous century.
And if you follow my link to Tso'ar, you will see my comment about Jeremiah 48:34, which is worth following.
What is the significance of the 3 year old heifer? It makes no sense in the sentence - unless perhaps they have gone up to the BAYIT to sacrifice one. One-year-old lambs are designated in Exodus 12:5, and red heifers in Numbers 19; generally age and species are specific to certain types of atonement or petition. But it is to Genesis 15:9 that we need to go for the 3-year-old =- and follow my notes and other links from there.
Flight through the Ascent of Luchit and Choronayim. But, who is fleeing? And who is doing the destroying? If this is Ashur attacking Mo-Av why does Y-Y need to address the issue?
MA'ALEH HA LUCHIT: And the problem arises yet again: real town, or poetic metaphor? The laws of Mosheh were written on two "Tablets", which in Yehudit are LUCHOT, from the root LU'ACH. And one makes ALIYAH, which is to say one "goes up", to receive the Law from the deity whose priests inhabit the mountain-top shrine (BAYIT...RAMOT), just as one makes an ALIYAH in synagogue today to lead the reading or the prayers. The Yirme-Yah referenced above (Jeremiah 48:5) plays with the words in exactly the same way, and ditto below.
CHORONAYIM: No such place is known, other than in the poetry of these two Prophets. CHOR means "a hole", so it might be, as many translators render it, a multiple plural (...AYIM), and therefore "Two Hollows"; and indeed there is a place that does have that meaning, which appears just once, in Ezekiel 47:16 and 18; but it is written there as CHAVRAN (חורן), which is probably the Aramaic spelling of Charan, way east of Damasek (Damascus), and therefore not our CHORONAYIM.
What is the significance of the 3 year old heifer? It makes no sense in the sentence - unless perhaps they have gone up to the BAYIT to sacrifice one. One-year-old lambs are designated in Exodus 12:5, and red heifers in Numbers 19; generally age and species are specific to certain types of atonement or petition. But it is to Genesis 15:9 that we need to go for the 3-year-old =- and follow my notes and other links from there.
Flight through the Ascent of Luchit and Choronayim. But, who is fleeing? And who is doing the destroying? If this is Ashur attacking Mo-Av why does Y-Y need to address the issue?
MA'ALEH HA LUCHIT: And the problem arises yet again: real town, or poetic metaphor? The laws of Mosheh were written on two "Tablets", which in Yehudit are LUCHOT, from the root LU'ACH. And one makes ALIYAH, which is to say one "goes up", to receive the Law from the deity whose priests inhabit the mountain-top shrine (BAYIT...RAMOT), just as one makes an ALIYAH in synagogue today to lead the reading or the prayers. The Yirme-Yah referenced above (Jeremiah 48:5) plays with the words in exactly the same way, and ditto below.
CHORONAYIM: No such place is known, other than in the poetry of these two Prophets. CHOR means "a hole", so it might be, as many translators render it, a multiple plural (...AYIM), and therefore "Two Hollows"; and indeed there is a place that does have that meaning, which appears just once, in Ezekiel 47:16 and 18; but it is written there as CHAVRAN (חורן), which is probably the Aramaic spelling of Charan, way east of Damasek (Damascus), and therefore not our CHORONAYIM.
But these are word-games, so we have to speculate further.
CHOR is used for white linen, whether byssus or flax or cotton, and by Y-Y himself, in 19:9.
The CHORIM were the BENEY CHOR, one of the indigenous nations of Kena'an, and from them the name became a colloquialism for anyone born to the nobility. But their land was mostly Mount Se'ir, which was much further south, in what became Edom...
And then there is... but see my link to the CHORIM, and scroll down until you find him. When MOSHEH went out to battle at Rephidim, no doubt dressed in white linen and inspired by, if not actually carrying in his pockets, the LUCHOT, the High Priest Aharon held up one of his arms, and the other was "raised up" by, indeed held aloft by, one BEN CHOR...
15:6 KI MEY NIMRIM MESHAMOT YIHEYU KI YAVESH CHATSIR KALAH DESH'E YEREK LO HAYAH
כִּי מֵי נִמְרִים מְשַׁמּוֹת יִהְיוּ כִּי יָבֵשׁ חָצִיר כָּלָה דֶשֶׁא יֶרֶק לֹא הָיָה
KJ: For the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate: for the hay is withered away, the grass faileth, there is no green thing.
BN: For the Waters of Nimrim shall become turbid; for the grass is withered away, the flax fails, there is nothing green.
KI: We translators have wrestled for centuries with the word MASA that opens this chapter: an oracle? a pronouncing of judgement as in a verdict? a prophesy? and is that latter different from an oracle? KI seems to be an indicator of the answer: as modern legal documents are filled with endless "whereas" clauses, so this oddity "KI, which means "for" or "because", but neither word seems to fit into this sentence - and there are dozens of verses through these prophetic writings that begin with the same KI.
"Whereas the Waters of Nimrim shall become turbid. Whereas the grass shall wither away, the flax fail, so that there shall be nothing green."
Definitely suggests a verdict rather more than a piece of crystal-ball gazing. And if it is a verdict, then is the punishment what is said in the verse that follows?
NIMRIM: Numbers 32:4 has Nimrah, and 32:36 has Beit Nimrah - see my notes there: they may be the same as the place mentioned here, as both are located on the shores of Yam ha Melach, the Dead Sea. Joshua 13:27 also has Beit Nimrah, but locates it more precisely, in the valley beside Beit Haram; and by no coincidence, the modern town of Nahr Nimrim, just north of Yericho, on the river Jordan - click here.
The repetitions in or from Jeremiah 48 continue so precisely and so extensively, we have to start wondering if the scribes haven't made an error, and attributed this to the wrong Prophet - though which is right and which wrong, is an entirely different question. Or was one quoting the other? 1st Yesha-Yah is reckoned to have been 742-700 BCE - but this is probably not 1st Yesha-Yah. Yirme-Yah (Jeremiah) was 626-586; 2nd Yesha-Yah is traditionally reckoned (but I think this is wrong) to have been at the time of the Babylonian exile, around 540 BCE, and then 3rd Yesha-Yah (a remarkable underestimation!) in the early 500s.
15:7 AL KEN YITRAH ASAH U PHEKUDATAM AL NACHAL HA ARAVIM YISA'UM
15:7 AL KEN YITRAH ASAH U PHEKUDATAM AL NACHAL HA ARAVIM YISA'UM
עַל כֵּן יִתְרָה עָשָׂה וּפְקֻדָּתָם עַל נַחַל הָעֲרָבִים יִשָּׂאוּם
KJ: Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have laid up, shall they carry away to the brook of the willows.
BN: Therefore the abundance that they have acquired, and that which they have laid up, they shall carry away to the River of Arabia.
And why do we think ARAVIM means "willows" (this link thinks it means poplars)? Is this the Aravah - the land most associated with the Nabateans, around Petra on the east side of the Yarden? Or the one regarded as the wilderness in which David was pursued by Sha'ul - but that was well south of the Yam ha Melach, in Edom really, not Mo-Av? Is the root then ARAV, which just happens to be the word that gives us Arabia? Is it the same root that plays endless word-games with "crows" and "evenings" and "ambushes" (one with an Aleph - א - one with an Ayin - ע) in the books of Joshua and Judges - for which see my notes at Joshua 8:2 and Judges 9:25, though a search for OREV on my surf-the-site page will reveal countless more? Yes, on every one of these counts. And can I now regard NACHAL HA ARAVIM as being the land between the Perat (Euphrates) and the Tigris rivers, to which the Yehudim were carried away as exiles in 586 BCE?
15:8 KI HIKIYPHAH HA ZE'AKAH ET GEVUL MO-AV AD EGLAYIM YILELATAM U BE'ER EYLIM YILELATAM
כִּי הִקִּיפָה הַזְּעָקָה אֶת גְּבוּל מוֹאָב עַד אֶגְלַיִם יִלְלָתָהּ וּבְאֵר אֵילִים יִלְלָתָהּ
KJ: For the cry is gone round about the borders of Moab; the howling thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof unto Beerelim.
BN: For the cry has gone round all the borders of Mo-Av; its howling all the way to Tearpool, and its wailing all the way to Godswell.
EGLAYIM: Another multiple plural, like CHORONAYIM at verse 5. Another town that may or not be a physical location, but is definitely a metaphor. The root, AGAL, is either the motion of the tides or the gathering together of river-waters in a pool. But when waters go round in this manner, they eventually form a circle, which is rooted in the word AGAL, spelled with an Ayin however, not the Aleph that we have here. And this crying is indeed going round, "round all the borders", and maybe the multiple pools of flowing water are metaphorical eyes, not actual ponds. Y-Y does loving playing these word-games with Gimmels and Lameds (see 7:20, 9:4, 10:30...)! And note also that an EGLAH is a young bullock or heiffer, the sort you might take for sacrifice at three years old (see verse 5), while EGLON was the name of an earlier king of MO-AV, for whom see Judges 3:12; Eglon was the name of a town in southern Yehudah, previously a royal city of the Beney Kena'an (see Joshua 10:3, 12:12, 15:39). And while I am quite certain that the word-games here include all of the above, that last one may very well be the only exception.
BE'ER EYLIM: My translation of both these names is an invention, an attempt to render in English the comic pun Y-Y is playing in Yehudit. A Be'er is a well, the EYLIM, or ELIM, are the gods; so it may be an actual shrine, or it may just be a metaphor. I have studied this in libraries, all the way from Nice in France to Grimsby in the north of England, and ... something of that order.
And don't forget - I probably should have reminded you a few verses ago when these watery images started - what the word Mo-Av means. See the link.
15:9 KI MI DIYMON MAL'U DAM KI ASHIT AL DIYMON NOSAPHOT LIPHLEYTAT MO-AV ARYEH VE LISH'ERIT ADAMAH
כִּי מֵי דִימוֹן מָלְאוּ דָם כִּי אָשִׁית עַל דִּימוֹן נוֹסָפוֹת לִפְלֵיטַת מוֹאָב אַרְיֵה וְלִשְׁאֵרִית אֲדָמָה
KJ: For the waters of Dimon shall be full of blood: for I will bring more upon Dimon, lions upon him that escapeth of Moab, and upon the remnant of the land.
BN: For the waters of Diymon are full of blood; for I will bring yet more upon Diymon, and upon the remnant of the land - a lion escaped from Mo-Av.
DIYMON: Is that an error for DIYVON, which we climbed to at verse 2? Certainly Gesenius believes that it is, if you look it up in his lexicon as spelled here. But look it up under the root DAMAN, leaving out the Yud (and it is highly unlikely that the "original" text would have had that Masoretic Yud, which bestows a decidedly Ashkenazi pronunciation on the word): DAMAN = "dung", usually in the positive sense of manure rather than the more purely excremental: cf 2 Kings 9:37, where it is rendered as DOMEN (דֹמֶן) and definitely the latter, or Jeremiah 8:2, 16:4 and 25:33.
So where does that leave our understanding? Is DIYVON being reduced to dung by word-play? Is Y-Y being "demonic", or even "daemonic" - but to understand that we need to go back to the proper meaning of "demon", before Christianity demonised it. See the Britannica etymology here.
ARYEH: Who knew there were still lions in this part of the world at that time? Shimshon (Samson) killed one in Judges 14:5, but that was a mythological not a historical event; the boy David claimed to have done the same, though in his case it was probably a mountain lion, which was probably an ibex but may have been a leopard, or even more likely the sort of tale a nine-year-old boy tells to try to impress his older brothers (but see my note on this at Judges 14:5 anyway, because it may help to explain the oracle here).
One remaining problem in this chapter: it is never stated who will be the destroyer – the deity, the Messiah, Ashur (Assyria), Bavel (Babylon), the restored remnant of Yehudah (Judea) and Mitsrayim (Egypt) have all done some destroying before this chapter. But which one now? Without that we cannot date it. The equivalent oracle at Jeremiah 48 suggests that it will indeed be demonic - as per the Britannica definition, and that the implement used will be the Beney Yehudah - see 48:27 for that.
And one remaining task for this chapter: to try to figure out whether:
a) Yesha-Yah's was the original, and Yirme-Yah merely quoting it, using it and then (massively) extending it, for his own purposes years later;
b) Yirme-Yah's was the original, but for some reason the scribes of Ezra's time thought it was Yesha-Yah's, and found a convenient place to include it, but only had a limited amount in memory, so this chapter is all we got;
c) quite extraordinary coincidence is at work here.
I have placed the two texts in parallel on a separate blog-page, and invite my reader to undertake the comparisons. Click here.
Isaiah:
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56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
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