Study Desk

"Wail, you gate; cry, you city; Melt away, Philistia, all of you! For smoke comes from the north, And there is no straggler in his ranks.

My heart cries out for Moab; His fugitives are as far as Zoar and Eglath-shelishiyah, For they go up the ascent of Luhith weeping; Indeed, on the road to Horonaim they raise a cry of distress over their collapse.

For the waters of Nimrim are desolate. Indeed, the grass is withered, the new growth has died, There is no greenery.

For the cry of distress has gone around the territory of Moab, Its wailing goes as far as Eglaim and its howling to Beer-elim.

For the waters of Dimon are full of blood; I will certainly bring added woes upon Dimon, A lion upon the fugitives of Moab and the remnant of the land.

"Let the outcasts of Moab stay with you; Be a hiding place to them from the destroyer." For the oppressor has come to an end, destruction has ceased, Oppressors have been removed from the land.

Therefore Moab will wail; everyone of Moab will wail. You will moan for the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth As those who are utterly stricken.

For the fields of Heshbon have withered, the vines of Sibmah as well; The lords of the nations have trampled down its choice clusters Which reached as far as Jazer and wandered to the deserts; Its tendrils spread themselves out and passed over the sea.

Therefore I will weep bitterly for Jazer, for the vine of Sibmah; I will drench you with my tears, Heshbon and Elealeh; For the shouting over your summer fruits and your harvest has fallen away.

Gladness and joy are taken away from the fruitful field; In the vineyards also there will be no cries of joy or jubilant shouting, No treader treads out wine in the presses, For I have made the shouting to cease.

Therefore my inner being sounds like a harp for Moab. And my heart for Kir-hareseth.

"The cities of Aroer are abandoned; They will be for herds to lie down in, And there will be no one to frighten them.

For you have forgotten the God of your salvation And have not remembered the rock of your refuge. Therefore you plant delightful plants And set them with vine shoots of a strange god.

For this is what the LORD has told me: "I will quietly look from My dwelling place Like dazzling heat in the sunshine, Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest."

For before the harvest, as soon as the bud blossoms And the flower becomes a ripening grape, He will cut off the shoots with pruning knives, And remove and tear away the spreading branches.

They will be left together for mountain birds of prey, And for the animals of the earth; And the birds of prey will spend the summer feeding on them, And all the animals of the earth will spend harvest time on them.

There will be no work for Egypt Which its head or tail, its palm branch or bulrush, may do.

And it will become a sign and a witness to the LORD of armies in the land of Egypt; for they will cry out to the LORD because of oppressors, and He will send them a Savior and a Champion, and He will save them.

Then the LORD said, "Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and symbol against Egypt and Cush,

"So the inhabitants of this coastland will say on that day, 'Behold, such is our hope, where we fled for help to be saved from the king of Assyria; and how are we ourselves to escape?'"