Introduction
In close connexion with each other, chapter xv and xvi apply to Moab. As seen from the western hills in Palestine, Moab seems a high and level table land, with a cliff wall abutting precipitately down to the eastern water edge of the Dead Sea. As seen, however, in the land itself, this wall begins to fall off some five to eight miles back from the sea. The chasm of the Arnon, running westward to the sea, divides the plain in the centre, and south of this lay Moab proper, though the nation so often occupied the northern half as well, that the whole land went by its name. AR, in the south division, was the capital; and KIR was a strong fortification on the extreme south. Moab also shared possession of the cities north, even in the nominal region of the allotment of the tribe of Reuben. The people of Moab, unlike their neighbours, the Ammonites and the Reubenites, tilled the soil as well as raised flocks and herds. Moab was tributary to David and Solomon, but fell to Israel in the schism under Jeroboam. From the death of Ahab of Israel to the accession of Uzziah of Judah, Moab held a quasi-independent position, but, with Ammon on the north, and Edom on the south, it was then made subject to Judah, but under later kings this subjection was feeble and precarious.
The prophecy here is no doubt generic, covering the condition and character of Moab for at least two centuries. The prophecy in Jeremiah xlviii is a copy and an amplification of this. Because of admitted archaisms in the prophecy, interpreters generally, at the present time, allow that Isaiah may have built on the groundwork laid by an older prophet, even a hundred years previously. It required but a small modification each time to be applicable to the state Moab was in, in both Isaiah’s and Jeremiah’s times.
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