Isaiah chapter 16

CHAPTER XVI.

Moab’s final subjection to the Kingdom of David.
IS he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also; seeing it is one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith. So writes Paul to the Romans. But now in the time of the Gentiles, the things of Israel are so much under eclipse that the questions must needs he reversed. "Is he the God of the Gentiles only?" By no means. "Salvation is of the Jews." But when Gentiles lay hold of the hope of Israel, Israelitish matters loom so large, and Gentile matters are so belittled, that there is even a possibility of running to the extreme that Paul confronted, and supposing that God has no particular interest in the nations outside Israel.

The truth lies between these extremes. All nations are to lie blessed in Abraham and his seed, though the order of blessing is certainly the Jew first, and afterwards the Gentile. And all nations are more or less remotely related to this great and glorious development—some exceedingly remotely, as the Chinese, or the tribes of Central Africa; some more closely, as the nations of European Christendom, and the Mohammedan Occupier and present Desolator of the Lord's land. It was so in ancient times; and the nations surrounding Israel are in the prophets made the subjects of God's communications, which show that He uses them in the out-working of His purpose, and holds them nationally responsible for their attitude to Him and His people Israel.

This is illustrated in the case before us—the prophecy of Isaiah concerning Moab. What are the commands addressed to Moab ? What are the judgments proclaimed against him?

What is the reason of them, and the ground of his national responsibility? The opening adjuration of Isa xvi. divinely commands tribute to Israel: " Send ye the lamb to the ruler of the land from Sela to the wilderness, unto the Mount of the daughter of Zion." 

In this there appears to be a proximate and far future application and intention. As we read in 2 Kings in. 4, "Mesha, King of Moab, was a sheep master, and rendered unto the King of Israel, an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams with the wool." The magnitude of this tribute and the greatness of the pastoral prosperity that it argues will be best appreciated by those who know something of sheep-farming (as in the Australian Colonies). But Mesha rebelled, as the history in Kings goes on to state, and as he himself says in his inscription on the u Moabite Stone." Long afterwards came this prophecy of Isaiah. That the command produced any proximate obedience on the part of Moab does not appear; but that it will so operate hereafter, we cannot doubt. Moab's tribute will come in with others in the day of Zion's glory, of which God says: " All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory" (Isa. lx.). Then will the house of David say: "Judah is my lawgiver; Moab is my wash pot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe: Philistia triumph thou over me (if thou canst)" (Psa. lx. and cviii.). And Judah and Ephraim united under Christ, and with the old enmity healed and forgotten, will " lay their hand on Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon shall obey them" (Isa. xi. 14). But before all this, God's judgments were to come upon Moab because of their pride, and their exultation over the calamities He had brought upon His people. " Behold," said He to Moab, among other powers, " I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished ? Ye shall not be unpunished" (Jer. xxv. 29). And so Moab had to take of the wine-cup of His fury (v. 15) and come under the same Babylonian yoke (Jer. xxvii. 1-7). Thus, Moab the uncircumcised was punished with Israel, circumcised in flesh but " uncircumcised in the heart " (ch. ix. 26). The reasons of the judgments are plainly given in the prophets. The following are examples: " We have heard of the pride of Moab; he is very proud : even of his haughtiness and his pride, and his wrath: but his lies shall not be so (or, his boasting is nought, E.V.). Therefore shall Moab howl for Moab " (Tsa. xvi. 6). "Because thou hast trusted in thy works and in thy treasures, thou shalt also be taken : and Chemosh shall go forth into captivity with his priests and his princes together, and the spoiler shall come. . ,. . Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity: therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed. Therefore behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send unto him wanderers that shall cause him to wander, and shall empty his vessels and break their bottles. And Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel their confidence. . . . Moab is spoiled, saith the King, whose name is the Lord of Hosts." The <£ strong staff and beautiful rod " would be broken and cast away to make room for the " rod out of the stem of Jesse," whose people at last should " lay their hands upon Moab." " Make ye him drunken, for he magnified himself against the Lord. . . . For was not Israel, a derision unto thee ? Since thou spakest of him thou skippedst for joy." Because of this, God would cause to cease the worship of Moab, and the Babylonian eagle would spread his wings over Moab as over Israel. "And Moab shall be destroyed from being a people, hecause he hath magnified himself against the Lord " (Jer. xlviii.). So Ezekiel (chap. xxv. 8): " Because that Moab and Seir do say, Behold, the house of Judah is like unto all the heathen, therefore I will open the side of Moab . . . unto the men of the east, . . . and I will execute judgment upon Moab, and they shall know that I am the Lord." So also Amos ii. : " For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because he burned the bones of the King of Edom into lime." Λ king of Moab offered1 his own son as a burnt offering to his idols in the days of Elisha, and this would appear to have been a similar abomination. It is probably to an action like this that Micah (ch. vi.)1 alludes when, referring to the intrigues of Balak against Israel and rebuking their idolatry, he says: " Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Then again Zephaniah says of Moab : " I have heard the reproach of Moab and the revilings of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached my people, and magnified themselves against their border. Therefore as I live, saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles and salt pits and a perpetual desolation : the residue of my people shall spoil them, and the remnant of my people shall possess them. This shall they have for their pride, hecause they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the Lord of Hosts. The Lord will be terrible unto them, for He will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen " (Zeph. ii. 8-11). One of the statutes of the law said "An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord ; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever; hecause they met you not with bread and water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt: and because they hired against thee Balaam the Son of Beor of Pethor in Mesopotamia, to curse thee " (Deut. sxiii. 44). All these divine proclamations concerning an outside nation are valuable guidance to the Gentiles if they would but hear them. They are on record against the time to come. They are a standing denunciation of things most esteemed among the nations to this day. Pride, trust in uncertain riches, settlement on the lees, idolatry of various forms, reckoning Israel no different from all the heathen, magnifying themselves against them, even against the Lord and His people—all these things are characteristic, more or less, of the most prominent Gentile powers to-day, and will be more and more so until the crisis comes which has been so long ago revealed in the prophets. The Anti-Semitic movement, bred and fostered among the European powers, has its condemnation and judgment exemplified in these prophecies ; but the supporters of it will certainly not learn righteousness until the judgments of the Lord are in the earth, and their origin, and connection, and aim explained to the humbled remnant of the nations that fight against Zion by her king enthroned in victory. The proud and wealthy nations of Europe have no idea that they are God's instruments in preparing the world for the establishing of His everlasting kingdom in Israel. They will stand aghast at the revelation when it comes. The lower strata of their societies account those mad who introduce such matters to their notice, while their heavenlies or upper-ten-dom are far above, impervious and inaccessible to any such disturbing visions. And yet the quiet record is there among them all the while— " Nebuchadnezzar my servant," humbled to the estate of a beast of the field till he knew that the heavens do rule—the Assyrian, God's " hired razor " wherewith he " shaved " Israel bare, his " rod " of chastisement which was discarded and thrown into the fire when done with. Prophecy and history are there in abundance, but comparatively few individuals in any age or country do themselves the honour of studying it and believing in God, to the extent of obeying His commandments and waiting for His salvation. A sharp distinction of time is expressed in the conclusion of Isaiah's prophecy of chapters xv.-xvi. " This is the word that the Lord hath spoken concerning Moab since that time (literally, " from then "). Bub now the Lord hath spoken, saying, AVithin three years as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be contemned, with all that great multitude ; and the remnant shall be very small and feeble." " What manner of time" they spoke of by the spirit, was a subject of diligent search and enquiry by the prophets themselves, who often had to speak and write things they understood not for the benefit of succeeding ages and generations (1 Pet. i. 10-12). At the end their visions were to speak, and their dark sayings to become intelligible to " the wise." This is coming to pass in the experience of those who by the Word of God in the submission to it are made " wiser than their teachers." An eminent teacher among the higher critics, who will not yield this submission, stands in doubt of this prophecy concerning Moab. He says : " A vivid picture of the confusion and anguish then prevalent in Moab has been preserved to us in the ancient prophecy of Isaiah xv.-xvi., which indeed would have greater historical value if we were able to tell precisely what in it depicts the present, and what is prediction of the future." But no one, however great may be his learning and celebrity, can possibly hope to come anywhere near such discrimination who is ignorant of the gospel of the kingdom, and consequently faithless concerning the divinely-promised restoration of the throne and kingdom of David, which is the subject of allusion in part of this prophecy. To one enlightened by the gospel the case is not so hopeless. First, then, with regard to the " now," " within three years, as the years of an hireling." The expression, " years of an hireling," is suggestive. In the scriptures the position of a " hireling," or hired servant, is used in contradistinction to that ot a son and heir. This may be seen in Christ's parable of the vineyard labourers, and that of the prodigal son, also in his contrast of the Pharisaic " hirelings" of Israel with himself as the " good shepherd " (Jno. x.). Nationally Israel is Yahweh's Son, His firstborn (Ex. iv. 22), and the Gentiles—Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, Russian, German, British, or others —His " hirelings," who do His subordinate work, but have not in His house of glory the eternal inheritance of the Son. The Assyrian was His " hired razor; " the Babylonian (Nebuchadnezzar) did " great service against Tyre," for which his " wages" was the land of Egypt (Ezek. xxix.), a thing at once historical and prophetic. And so Moab before God was a mere " hireling,'' though very proud and prosperous, and boasting against Him in Chemosh his god. The same expression is used in chapter xxi. 16 concerning Kedar : " a year according to the years of an hireling." The preservation of Israel to this day under our eyes, and these expressions in the prophets concerning long vanished peoples, reveal human affairs to our admiring gaze in perspective that can only be divine. The precise time of the expiry of the " three years " spoken of by Isaiah (xvi. 14), it is no doubt difficult, if not impossible, now to fix with certainty. It is conjectured to refer to Shalmaneser, who, about this time, destroyed Samaria, and probably previously overran the country east of Jordan. It was most certainly fulfilled, we may be sure, and further light is not so absolutely inaccessible and hopeless as some, even reverent writers, imagine. One of these says: " Half the allusions of Isaiah and Jeremiah must for ever remain obscure. We shall never know who ' the lords of the heathen ' were, who, in that terrible night, laid waste and brought to silence the prosperous Ar-Moab and Kir-Moab. Or the occasion of that flight over the Arnony when the Moabite women were huddled together at the ford, like a flock of young birds, pressing to cross to the safe side of the stream—when the dwellers in Aroer stood by the side of the high road which passed their town, and eagerly questioned the fugitives as they hurried up, ' What is done ?'—received but one answer from all alike—' All is lost ! Moab is confounded and broken down ! ' " If Isaiah and Jeremiah themselves were destined for ever to remain obscure in the oblivion of hades, we might share the regret of the writer of these graphic lines. But, with the assurance that they shall prophesy again gloriously in the Kingdom of God, we can look forward to that time of intense interest when, from all the generations of the past will come the chosen witnesses of the work of God in each, comprising in one glorious multitude a living epitome of the Father's work on earth. If Paul could describe the Corinthians as the epistle of Christ written with the Spirit of God, how much more may the "perfect man" be so described in the day of his perfection ? How far above all human thoughts and speculations are these divine purposes! How subversive of all high thoughts and reasonings that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God!

But to turn from the " now," " within three years" of Isaiah's day to the " from then" of his simultaneous proclamation, what do we see? To what time does the "then" of this word of the Lord point us? To what crisis ? To what institution ? Who can hesitate to answer in the terms of the prophecy itself: To the time when " in mercy shall the throne (of David) be established; and HE shall sit upon it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging and seeking judgment, and hasting righteousness" (verse 5). But when might that time be? Let the King himself answer. " When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory" (Matt. xxv. 31). If popular religion does not agree with this, let it be discarded. " In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David which is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old" (Amos ix. 11; Acts xv. 16). Here, then, is a definite time, a definite crisis and institution— the return of Christ and the re-establishment of David's throne. With arithmetical measurements of the time we do not now concern ourselves, as Isaiah does not introduce them. But we look at divine delineation of Moabitish developments to be connected with the crisis that still lies ahead. The command runs : "Take counsel, execute judgment; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab: for the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land" (verse 3-5). When David came up to Adullam from the land of the Philistines, he " went thence to Mizpeh of Moab; and said unto the King of Moab, Let my father and my mother, I pray thee, come forth and be with you, till I know what God will do for me. And he brought them before the King of Moab : and they dwelt with him all the while that David was in the hold" (1 Sam. xxii. 3-4). What God did for David was this. He caused Saul to fall in battle upon the mountains of Gilboa, and established David on the throne in Jerusalem, which thereafter was known as " the throne of David." After his coronation, David doubtless brought back his relations, before that war with Moab of which we read in 2 Sam. viii. 2. It would appear that in this, as in David's other experiences, and in the history of Joseph and many other places, we have one of those beautiful allegories with which the Bible abounds. David the Second (that is, the Lord Jesus) comes up into his inheritance from the South, and a Spoiler is then in possession of Jerusalem. The Jews, his brethren after the flesh, are in great affliction ; and, under these circumstances, the hospitality of Moab for David's parents, at his request, is antitypically repeated in the national hospitality of Moab in the latter days for the fugitive Jews. But who is the latter-day Spoiler and Extortioner ? and who is the latter-day Moab ? The answer to these questions must be derived from the other prophecies which speak of the same time, and from what of their fulfilment may be before us in the history of the latter days. Ezekiel, who prophesied about a hundred and thirty years later than Isaiah, and who spoke of the setting-up at last by Yahweh of " one shepherd " over Israel, even his "servant David, a prince among them," revealed the fact that at the crisis of the national resurrection of Israel (ch. xxxvii.) there should arise a Spoiler from the north (ch. xxxviii.) who, with many peoples, should be like a cloud to cover the land; and in his spoiling of the land of Israel, and conflicts with a Southern confederation of Powers, should be the occasion of manifesting the God of Israel in the judgments he would provoke. The two chapters xxxviii., xxxix. tell of this great crisis, and then follows the temple vision and the setting-up of God's throne in Israel in the hands of the Prince of the House of David. Daniel also received from the angel a revelation of the actions of these rival powers in " the time of the end" (Dan. xi. 40). The King of the North overflows and spoils the glorious land ; " but these shall escape out of his hand even Edom and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon." Here then is the " covert" for the " outcasts " in the terrible " time of trouble" that immediately precedes the " establishment in mercy of the throne of David" (Isa. xvi.). Daniel agrees with Ezekiel in the revelation that the appearing of the glory of God marks that time to favour Zion, for in ch. xii. we have the standing up of Michael the great Prince (the Lord Jesus), and the resurrection of the dead associated with the same time. We have only to study the signs and the times to satisfy ourselves perfectly that we are in this " time of the end." In Dan. xi. the Northern King, though Moab escapes him, is to " have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt." A hundred years ago and less Egypt was incomparably less of a prize than at present. The cutting of the Suez Canal, and the British occupation have vastly improved the country, and excited the jealousies and cupidities that the prophetic word implies. British Imperial Sea-Power in Egypt and the South ; and Russian Imperial Land-Power in all the countries of the North fits the prophecies exactly in all details of time, place, and circumstance. The demonstration of the fact was most discerningly and faithfully made by Dr. Thomas in Elpis Israel fifty years ago, when there was very much less evidence available than at present. His unhesitating conviction expressed so long ago, that God " will bring Britain's rulers to see the desirableness of Egypt . . . which they will be induced, by iorce of circumstances probably, to take possession of" (p. 398), is a standing monument to the correctness of his interpretations ; for over thirty years afterwards the thing came to pass. And this was but one item of many that prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that in these latter days the words of the prophets have (to a certain class) become intelligible as God said they should. Driven out of Egypt by Russia and her allies, Britain, whose solitary friendship for the Jews is now so conspicuous amidst a world of persecutors, takes refuge in Edom and Moab, and there becomes a " covert" for the "outcasts," who are now, in their " Zionist" movements, establishing themselves in the land of Palestine in a feeble manner, as Ezekiel xxxviii. requires. These things are the signs of the time of the end and the nearness of the kingdom of God. Although a Jewish kingdom, its aims and objects are not the mere lust of dominion and self-aggrandizement at the expense of other nations. Far otherwise. Its king shall reign "i n mercy," "judging and seeking judgment, and hasting righteousness.'1 This will indeed be a new kingdom in the earth, in which at last " many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day." And among them Moab, as it is written : " Yet I will bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter days, saith the Lord." That is to say, the country will be re-populated, and Ruth the Moabitess, and any others of Moab who may have " entered into the congregation of the Lord" in the highest sense, and now be imprisoned in the confines of hades, will be liberated by the almighty power of him who, having "ascended up on high, has led captivity captive and given gifts unto men" (Eph. iv.). The ancient animosity of Moab, like the " envy" between Ephraim and Judah, will then be a thing of the past, and the glad and bounteous tribute of his fertile pastures be accepted upon God's altar in 4< the mount of the daughter of Zion."