FOREWORD: ISAIAH 15.
Isaiah’s enigmatic diatribe against Moab.
Moab was the arch enemy of Israel and a constant thorn in her side wherever possible. Its territory was situated on the east of Jordan River and south of Gilead which can often be found in a modern Atlas. Midia and Moab conspired together to curse Israel using the soothsayer Balaam on its last stop before entering the Promised Land after its forty years wandering in the wilderness.
Though the false prophet Balaam refused to curse Israel, Moab then entrapped it at Baal-Peor, enticing the Hebrew men to fornicate with the prostitutes of the Baal’s idolatrous and sensuously erotic worship of devils. (See St. Paul’s comment in his letter to the Church of Corinth). The reader will remember that Moses’ father-in-law came from Midia and that Gideon with his 300 men in the Book of Judges fought a battle with the Midianites.
As Joshua forded the Jordan River it banked up and ceased to flow until all of the Israelites had finished walking over the dry river bed. It then returned to its normal flow, brimming over its banks.
This chapter has a plethora of literary devices in the prophet’s poetic, but sometimes enigmatic description. A host of geographic names within Moab, but forgotten mostly in time, can daunt the reader, as can the typical obliqueness of his indirect syntax, but it is well worth persisting with the attempt of grasping Isaiah’s message in its rich historical beauty.
Describing the coming attack on Moab by Assyria’s armies from Nineveh, the prophet goes into great detail over the devastation and destruction of cities and landscape. Even after Moab’s successful demoralization of the children of Israel with the treachery of Baal-Peor, Moab continued to be a hostile thorn in Israel’s side. God’s wrath moves slowly at times, but He never forgets to rewards Israel’s enemy nations with his wrath.
You will remember that the last stop of Moses before crossing Jordan was in Moab where he went to Pisgah’s Peak on Mt. Nebo to view the Land before he died. Remember also that Moab had enlisted Midia and its soothsayer Balaam to curse Israel and stop Moses in his tracks.
However, when this plan did not work Balaam and Balak conspired to lure Moses’ people into immoral actions that would prevent Jehovah from letting them into the Land of milk and honey (the Promised Land) for which they had marched some forty years. Geographic reference points: Kir, Dibon, Nebo, Medeba, Heshbon, Elealeh, Jahaz, Zoar, Luhith, Horonaim, Nimrim, and Dimon all relate to Moab’s towns and topography within or adjacent to Moab like Zoar, next to, but now under, the Dead Sea.
