1Concerning Moab, thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel.
Woe to Nebo, for it is ravaged,
Kiriathaim is shamed, is captured.
The stronghold is shamed and shattered.
2The Praise of Moab is no more.
In Heshbon they plotted harm against her:
“Come, let us cut her off as a nation
Madmein, too, you shall be mute.
After you the sword shall go.”
3A sound of outcry from Horonaim—
wrack and great ruin.
4Moab is broken,
her young make heard an outcry.
5For on the Ascent of Luhith
weeping upon weeping goes up.
For in the Descent of Horonaim
a distressed outcry of shattering they hear.
6Flee, save your lives,
and become like Aroer in the desert.
7For, as you put trust
in your works and in your treasures,
you, too, shall be caught,
and Chemosh shall go out into exile,
his priests and his nobles together.
8And the ravager shall come to each town,
no town shall escape.
And the valley shall perish,
and the plain be destroyed,
as the LORD said.
9Make a marker for Moab,
for she surely shall go out,
and her towns shall become a desolation
with no dweller within them.
10Cursed be he who deceives when he does the LORD’s task,
and cursed be he who holds back his sword from blood.
11Moab was tranquil from his youth
and settled in his lees,
and was not poured from jug to jug,
nor in exile did he go.
Therefore his flavor stood in him
and his fragrance did not change.
12Therefore, look, days are coming, said the LORD, when I will send him men to tip him over, and they shall pour out his jugs and shatter his flasks. 13And Moab shall be shamed of Chemosh as the house of Israel was shamed of Bethel, their trust.
14How can you say, “We are warriors
and men of valor for battle”?
15Moab is ravaged, gone up from its towns
and its choicest young men gone down to the slaughter
—said the King, LORD of Armies is His name.
16Moab’s disaster is close to come,
and its harm is very swift.
17Console him, all who are round him
Say, how is the staff of strength broken,
the splendid rod!
18Go down from glory, sit in thirst,
O dweller, Daughter of Dibon.
For Moab’s ravager has gone up against you,
laid waste to your fortresses.
19By the wayside stand and look out,
O dweller of Aroer.
Ask him who flees and him who escapes,
Say “What has happened?”
20Moab is shamed, for she is shattered.
Wail and cry out.
Tell it in Arnon
that Moab is ravaged.
21And judgment has come to the plain land, to Holon and to Johzah, and to Maphaath 22and to Dibon and to Nebo and to Beth-Diblathaim 23and to Kiriathaim and to Beth-Gamul and to Beth-Maon 24and to Kerioth and to Bozrah and to all the towns of Moab, far and near.
25The horn of Moab is hacked down
and his arm is broken, said the LORD.
26Make him drunk, for over the LORD he vaunted,
and Moab shall dabble in his vomit
and he, too, shall become a mockery.
27For was not Israel a mockery to you?
Was he found among the thieves,
for as you spoke against him, you shook your head?
28Leave the towns and dwell among the rocks,
O dwellers of Moab,
and be like the dove that nests
on the brink of a pit.
29We have heard the pride of Moab,
very proud,
his haughtiness, headstrong, his pride,
and his overweening heart.
30I know, said the LORD, his rage and his lies are not right, not right have they done. 31Therefore over Moab I wail, and over all Moab I cry out, for the men of Kir-Heres I moan.
32More than the weeping for Jazer I weep for you,
O vine of Sibmah.
Your branches passed over the sea,
to the sea, to Jazer they reached.
On your summer fruit and on your vintage
the ravager has fallen.
33And joy and gladness are taken away
from the farmland, from the land of Moab,
and wine from the presses I made cease,
the shout is no shout.
34From Heshbon’s cry to Eleaheh to Jahaz they raised their voices, from Zoar to Horonaim, Eglath-Shelishiah, for the waters of Nimrim have become a desolation. 35And I have caused to cease for Moab, said the LORD, offering up on the high places and burning incense to his gods. 36Therefore My heart moans for Moab like pipes and, for the men of Kir-Heres like pipes it moans, for the abundance they made—it has vanished.
37For every pate is shaved,
and every beard is shorn,
on all the hands are gashes
and over loins is sackcloth.
38On all the roofs of Moab and in her squares all is lament, for I have broken Moab like an unwanted vessel, said the LORD. 39How she is shattered! O, wail! How Moab has turned its back in shame, and Moab has become a mockery and a fright, said the LORD. 40For thus said the LORD,
and spreads his wings against Moab.
41Kerioth is captured
and the strongholds are seized,
and the heart of Moab’s warriors on that day
is like the heart of a woman in pangs.
42And Moab is destroyed as a people,
for it vaunted over the LORD.
43Terror and pitfall and trap
against you, O dweller of Moab, said the LORD.
44Who flees from the terror
shall fall into the pit,
and who gets up from the pit
shall be caught in the trap.
For I will bring against her, against Moab,
the year of their reckoning, said the LORD.
45In the shadow of Heshbon they stopped,
those fleeing without strength,
for fire has come out from Heshbon
and a flame from within Sihon,
and consumed the brow of Moab
and the pate of the raucous ones.
46Woe to you, O Moab,
Chemosh’s people has perished.
For your sons are taken captive
and your daughters are in captive state.
47But I will restore the fortunes of Moab
in the days after, said the LORD.
Thus far the judgment of Moab.
CHAPTER 48 NOTES
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1. Nebo . . . / Kiriathaim. Nebo was the mountain in trans-Jordan on which, according to Deuteronomy, Moses delivered his farewell address. Kiriathiam means “twin city.” In the list of Moabite towns that follows, some of the sites have been identified by archaeologists; others remain unknown.
2. Madmein. The conventional English transliteration, Madmen, unfortunately looks like a designation of the insane.
7. Chemosh shall go out into exile. Chemosh is the principal god of Moab. In conquest, local idols were often borne off by the conquerors, although this clause probably has a secondary meaning, suggesting that the deity is exiled with his worshippers.
9. Make a marker for Moab. The Hebrew noun here, tsits, means either “tassel,” “diadem,” or “blossom.” Attempts to make the sense of “diadem” work here are strained, as is the claim that the term means “wing.” This translation follows the Septuagint, which reads tsiyun, “marker.”
10. the LORD’s task. As verse 2 made clear, the LORD’s task is the ruthless implementation of the destruction of Moab.
12. I will send him men to tip him over. These would be the invading Babylonians, about to devastate and exile Moab after its long period of relative tranquillity, “settled in his lees” (verse 11). The breaking of the (clay) vessels both continues the metaphor of the wine in jugs and evokes the actual destruction of Moab, when its towns and possessions are smashed.
13. as the house of Israel was shamed of Bethel. The prophet, hewing to the view of the Deuteronomistic History, conceives the northern kingdom’s sanctuary at Bethel, with its bull-shaped icons of YHWH, as a place of idolatry and hence a cultic equivalent of pagan Moab.
15. Moab is ravaged, gone up from its towns. There is no good textual warrant for emending the passive verb shudad to read shoded, “ravager.” The land has been ravaged, and its people “go up,” which has the sense of “withdraw,” from the towns where they lived. The going up has a pointed antithesis in the second verset, when the young men are said to have “gone down to the slaughter.”
17. all who know his name. This idiom suggests an intimate relationship and hence is a parallel term to “all who are round him.”
18. sit in thirst. The Moabite towns, like the one mentioned here, Dibon, were surrounded by desert—hence the sitting in thirst as the fate of the exiles.
25. The horn of Moab. As almost everywhere in biblical poetry, “horn” is an epithet for “strength,” an idiom deriving from the goring power of a bull or ram. “Arm” in the second verset is equally a term for strength, though one that comes from human anatomy.
26. dabble in his vomit. The Hebrew verb usually means “to clap” and so here probably means to “dabble” or “splash about.”
he, too. It should be noted that Moab is referred to sometimes as a masculine agent, because the noun is masculine, and sometimes in the feminine, because lands are imagined as women. Such gender switching is fairly common in biblical poetry.
27. For was not Israel a mockery to you? Here, “Israel” probably means the northern kingdom. Moab mocked it when the Assyrians destroyed it, but now the same fate has overtaken Moab.
Was he found among the thieves. Moab treated Israel as though it were a criminal who deserved what had befallen it.
for as you spoke against him. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “for as your words against him.” Either devareykha, “your words,” should be emended to dabrekha, “your speaking,” or it may simply have the same sense as dabrekha.
you shook your head. This is a gesture of mockery.
29. his haughtiness, headstrong, his pride. The Hebrew makes the point emphatic through strong alliteration: govho ugeʾono wegaʾawato. This translation reproduces only two-thirds of the alliteration. A more literal rendering is: his haughtiness and his arrogance and his pride.
30. his lies are not right, not right have they done. The Hebrew syntax is obscure and the meaning far from certain.
32. Your branches passed over the sea. Given that Moab is in the trans-Jordanian region, the sea would be the Dead Sea.
33. none treads with a shout, / the shout is not a shout. The shout in question, heydad, is the rhythmic shout or perhaps chant that the grape-treaders call out as they trample the grapes. This would be a joyous shout, but here there is no vintage, and either no one shouts (first verset), or there is no shout of joy (second verset).
36. like pipes. Most translations represent this as “flutes,” but the term refers to a shepherd’s simple wooden pipes, which emit a rustic, piercing sound.
for the abundance they made—it has vanished. The Hebrew text here looks defective, so the translation is merely a guess.
37. For every pate is shaved, / and every beard is shorn, / on all the hands are gashes, / and over loins is sackcloth. Every one of these items is a sign of mourning.
40. like an eagle he soars. The “he” is Nebuchadrezzar, whose armies are about to lay waste to Moab and the other trans-Jordanian kingdoms and then to Judah.
41. the strongholds. It is possible that the Hebrew hametsudot is a place-name.
43. Terror and pitfall and trap. This whole line of poetry, together with the next two, constitutes a direct citation of Isaiah 24:17–18. The Hebrew exhibits rich alliterative wordplay only faintly mirrored in the single alliteration of this translation (paḥat wafaḥat wafaḥ).
45. from within Sihon. This appears to be what the Hebrew text says. But it is possible that the preposition mibeyn simply reflects a scribal reversal of consonants and that the original word was mibeney, “from the sons of.”
46. Chemosh’s people. Chemosh being the tutelary god of Moab, “Chemosh’s people” is a poetic epithet—situated in the second verset, as such epithets almost invariably are—for the Moabites.
47. But I will restore the fortunes of Moab. It may seem a bit odd that Jeremiah would stipulate restoration for this traditional enemy of his people. Some scholars say that such stipulation at the end of a prophecy of destruction is more or less formulaic, but Jeremiah may have in mind a geopolitical consideration: if the Babylonian conquest of Judah is eventually to be reversed and the kingdom of Judah reestablished, such restoration would also be extended to Judah’s neighbors to the immediate east.