Isaiah_16-18

Isaiah 16-18

Chapter 16 opens with a last call to Moab to avail herself of the mercy of God.

Isaiah 16:1-5 (ESV)
¹  Send the lamb to the ruler of the land, from Sela, by way of the desert, to the mount of the daughter of Zion.
²  Like fleeing birds, like a scattered nest, so are the daughters of Moab at the fords of the Arnon.
³  “Give counsel; grant justice; make your shade like night at the height of noon; shelter the outcasts; do not reveal the fugitive;
⁴  let the outcasts of Moab sojourn among you; be a shelter to them from the destroyer. When the oppressor is no more, and destruction has ceased, and he who tramples underfoot has vanished from the land,
⁵  then a throne will be established in steadfast love, and on it will sit in faithfulness in the tent of David one who judges and seeks justice and is swift to do righteousness.”

Quote: Vernon McGee

A lamb was to be sent from Moab to Israel for an offering on the altar there. The lamb was the animal of sacrifice which best depicts Christ, “… the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). If they sent a lamb, Moab would signify that they recognized the God of Israel. They did not send a lamb. The Moabites wanted to be religious without acknowledging the fact that they were subject to a higher will and were sinners in the sight of God. This was their great sin.

Isaiah 16:6-14 (ESV)
⁶  We have heard of the pride of Moab— how proud he is!— of his arrogance, his pride, and his insolence; in his idle boasting he is not right.
⁷  Therefore let Moab wail for Moab, let everyone wail. Mourn, utterly stricken, for the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth.
⁸  For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah; the lords of the nations have struck down its branches, which reached to Jazer and strayed to the desert; its shoots spread abroad and passed over the sea.
⁹  Therefore I weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah; I drench you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh; for over your summer fruit and your harvest the shout has ceased.
¹⁰  And joy and gladness are taken away from the fruitful field, and in the vineyards no songs are sung, no cheers are raised; no treader treads out wine in the presses; I have put an end to the shouting.
¹¹  Therefore my inner parts moan like a lyre for Moab, and my inmost self for Kir-hareseth.
¹²  And when Moab presents himself, when he wearies himself on the high place, when he comes to his sanctuary to pray, he will not prevail.
¹³  This is the word that the LORD spoke concerning Moab in the past.
¹⁴  But now the LORD has spoken, saying, “In three years, like the years of a hired worker, the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt, in spite of all his great multitude, and those who remain will be very few and feeble.”

The reason that God had to reject and judge Moab was that their pride had led them to reject His offer of mercy.  God would have delivered them, but instead they trusted in their own righteousness.

V.14 – Judgment was within three years….

Quote:  Vernon McGee:

Lucifer, the son of the morning, was also lifted up with pride. He wanted to lift his throne above the throne of God. He wanted to establish his own self–contained kingdom and be independent of God. Basically, this is the position of all liberal theology. Pride is the thing that causes people to reject God’s Word and His revelation. Most people want a do–it–yourself religion. They want to do something to be saved, because it ministers to their pride. Many accuse church members of being hypocritical, selfish, and some actually anti–God. All this rests basically on the pride of the human heart: “we have turned every one to his own way” (Isa. 53:6).

Judgment came upon Moab. This out–of–the–way nation, entirely forgotten today, has had a message for us.^[1]

An oracle concerning Damascus – Isaiah 17:1-14

Isaiah 17:1-14 (ESV)
¹  An oracle concerning Damascus. Behold, Damascus will cease to be a city and will become a heap of ruins.
²  The cities of Aroer are deserted; they will be for flocks, which will lie down, and none will make them afraid.
³  The fortress will disappear from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus; and the remnant of Syria will be like the glory of the children of Israel, declares the LORD of hosts.
⁴  And in that day the glory of Jacob will be brought low, and the fat of his flesh will grow lean.
⁵  And it shall be as when the reaper gathers standing grain and his arm harvests the ears, and as when one gleans the ears of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.
⁶  Gleanings will be left in it, as when an olive tree is beaten— two or three berries in the top of the highest bough, four or five on the branches of a fruit tree, declares the LORD God of Israel.
⁷  In that day man will look to his Maker, and his eyes will look on the Holy One of Israel.
⁸  He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and he will not look on what his own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense.
⁹  In that day their strong cities will be like the deserted places of the wooded heights and the hilltops, which they deserted because of the children of Israel, and there will be desolation.
¹⁰  For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge; therefore, though you plant pleasant plants and sow the vine-branch of a stranger,
¹¹  though you make them grow on the day that you plant them, and make them blossom in the morning that you sow, yet the harvest will flee away in a day of grief and incurable pain.
¹²  Ah, the thunder of many peoples; they thunder like the thundering of the sea! Ah, the roar of nations; they roar like the roaring of mighty waters!
¹³  The nations roar like the roaring of many waters, but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away, chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind and whirling dust before the storm.
¹⁴  At evening time, behold, terror! Before morning, they are no more! This is the portion of those who loot us, and the lot of those who plunder us.

Damascus was the leading city of Syria and some considered it the oldest city in the world.  It was destroyed and rebuilt, but frequently they moved the new city slightly away from the ruin site as in this case.

Damascus would be Syria

Ephraim would be the 10 tribes of Israel

Record of destruction of each:

2 Kings 15:29 (ESV)
²⁹  In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria came and captured Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and he carried the people captive to Assyria.

2 Kings 17:6 (ESV)
⁶  In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

Isaiah 18:1-7 – An Oracle Concerning Cush

Isaiah 18:1-7 (ESV)
¹  Ah, land of whirring wings that is beyond the rivers of Cush,
²  which sends ambassadors by the sea, in vessels of papyrus on the waters! Go, you swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering, whose land the rivers divide.
³  All you inhabitants of the world, you who dwell on the earth, when a signal is raised on the mountains, look! When a trumpet is blown, hear!
⁴  For thus the LORD said to me: “I will quietly look from my dwelling like clear heat in sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
⁵  For before the harvest, when the blossom is over, and the flower becomes a ripening grape, he cuts off the shoots with pruning hooks, and the spreading branches he lops off and clears away.
⁶  They shall all of them be left to the birds of prey of the mountains and to the beasts of the earth. And the birds of prey will summer on them, and all the beasts of the earth will winter on them.
⁷  At that time tribute will be brought to the LORD of hosts from a people tall and smooth, from a people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering, whose land the rivers divide, to Mount Zion, the place of the name of the LORD of hosts.

V.1 – “beyond the rivers of Ethiopia”  Not clear as to the exact nation that Isaiah had in mind.  The consensus is that it is “Ethiopia” where the word “Ethiopia” is Cush.

V.2 – Ethiopia is noted for its birds and it was called “the land of wings”

V.2  “a nation scattered and peeled” is Israel….

V.7 – Evidently a reference to the time when the Kingdom of Christ will be established on this earth and the Ethiopians will come again to Jerusalem to worship.

Psalm 87:4 – no judgement is spoken against them…

Psalm 87:4 (NKJV)
⁴  “I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to those who know Me; Behold, O Philistia and Tyre, with Ethiopia: ‘This one was born there.’ ”

^[1] McGee, J. V. (1991). Thru the Bible commentary: The Prophets (Isaiah 1-35) (electronic ed., Vol. 22, pp. 117–137). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.