Isaiah 16:1

XVI.

(1) Send ye the lamb to the ruler of the land.—In the days of Ahab, Mesha, the then king of Moab, had paid a tribute of sheep and lambs to the king of Israel (2 Kings 3:4). On his revolt (as recorded in the Moabite Inscription) that tribute had ceased. The prophet now calls on the Moabites to renew it, not to the northern kingdom, which was on the point of extinction, but to the king of Judah as the true “ruler of the land.” The name Sela (“a rock”) may refer either to the city so-called (better known by its Greek name of Petra), 2 Kings 14:7, or to the rock-district of Edom and the confines of Moab generally. In either case the special direction implies that the presence of the invaders described in Isaiah 15:0 would make it impossible to send the tribute across the fords of the Jordan, and that it must accordingly be sent by the southern route, which passed through Sela and the desert country to the south of the Dead Sea (Cheyne). Possibly the words are a summons to Edom, which had attacked Judah in the reign of Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28:17), to join in a like submission.