Isaiah15chapter 15

Moab sat on a high tableland east of the Dead Sea, cut in half by the deep gorge of the Arnon and dropping steeply to the west. It was sheep country and grain country, prosperous in a plain way. The towns Isaiah names — Ar, Kir, Dibon, Nebo, Medeba, Heshbon, Elealeh, Jahaz, Zoar, Horonaim, Eglaim, Beer-elim — were real places on that plateau. Several appear on the Moabite Stone, a victory slab set up by King Mesha of Moab around 840 BC and found at Dibon, which names the same towns and credits Moab's god Chemosh with its victories.

The mourning is described exactly as the region practiced it. Heads shaved bald, beards cut off, sackcloth worn in the streets and on the flat roofs where families slept and gathered, and wailing done out loud in the open squares. Men went up to the local shrine on the height to weep. None of that is metaphor; it is a funeral, filmed.

The waters are named because water is the plateau's life. The brook of the willows, the springs of Dimon, the waters of Nimrim — Isaiah says the grass is withered, the greenery gone, and what people can carry away they haul over the ravine of the willows. Refugees leaving a dry highland carried their savings and crossed the wadis south toward Edom.

The chapter is unusual among oracles because of its tone. The prophet says his own heart cries out for Moab, and its fugitives flee as far as Zoar, at the southern tip of the Dead Sea, and the cry goes round the whole border of the country. In one night — the phrase is repeated — Ar is laid waste, and Kir.