Verses 12-14
12-14. From times long, long past, Jehovah denounced calamity to Moab. Poole refers to Numbers 21:27-30, as intended. To the nation as a whole there was no relief.
Moab is weary on the high place “Weary” with offering unanswered prayer to Chemosh, his god, in his sanctuary, always on hills. “Weary,” also, with calamities.
Word… since that time Or, hitherto. “Word,” here, signifies former predictions respecting Moab; other prophets uttered them. They embodied the same principles contained in this entire prophecy. Isaiah now reiterates them as still applicable; and while his prophecy is in part generic, there is a reference in the fourteenth verse to a specific time when the ruin of Moab by some northern power shall be completed, and but the smallest remnant left of the people; they being chiefly those who abandon Chemosh for the worship of Jehovah. “The clause, as the years of a hireling, here, and Isaiah 21:16, must render the designation of time somewhat more definite, inasmuch as the hired labourer serves out his time but no more. Hence the sense is, ‘No longer and no shorter.’ See Isaiah 18:25.” Gesenius.
The prophecy, as a whole, is very obscure. The theory of it as a generic prophecy, covering conditions of Moab at different periods, helps to some solution of it, but its comparative historic relations are so slight as to keep it still obscure.
Be the first to react on this!
