9 Therefore I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah. I will water you with my tears, Heshbon, and Elealeh: for on your summer fruits and on your harvest the battle shout has fallen.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Therefore I will bewail. The Prophet here takes upon him the character of another person, as we have formerly remarked; for in the name of the Moabites he laments and groans. It is undoubtedly true that believers always shudder at the judgments of God, and cannot lay aside the feelings of human nature, so as not to commiserate the destruction of the wicked. Yet he does not describe his own feelings; but his intention is to give additional weight to his instruction, that no one may entertain a doubt as to the accomplishment. He therefore represents in the person of a Moabite, as on a stage, the mourning and grief which shall be felt by all after that calamity, in order to hold out to the Jews a confirmation of this promise, which otherwise might have been thought to be incredible. Because on thy summer-fruits and on thy harvest a shouting shall break forth, or shall fall. [1] This last clause of the verse is variously explained by commentators. nphl, (naphal,) signifies to fall, or to burst forth. Those who translate it, to burst forth, consider the word hydd, (hedad,) shouting, to refer to the enemies themselves; as if he had said, "The shouting of enemies bursts forth on thy harvest;" so that there is an implied contrast between this shouting and the joy of which he will afterwards speak. Others explain it to mean, that the shoutings will be laid; that is, "there shall be no more shouting, and no longer shall the glad and merry voices of the reapers be heard, cheering themselves after the harvest." But I would rather refer it to the shouting of enemies; and on this point I follow a most faithful interpreter of this passage, the Prophet Jeremiah, who says that the spoiler bursts forth, (Jeremiah 48:32,) where Isaiah speaks of the shouting of the enemy; as if he had said, "When thou shalt make preparations for gathering in thy harvest and thy vintage, the enemies will rush in, and, instead of joy and cheerful song, their shouting shall be heard, which shall drive thee far away."
1 - For the shouting for thy summer-fruits and for thy harvest is fallen. (Or, the alarm is fallen upon thy summer-fruits and upon thy harvest. -- Eng. Ver.
Therefore, I will bewail - So great is the desolation that I, the prophet, will lament it, though it belongs to another nation than mine own. The expression indicates that the calamity will be great (see the note at Isaiah 15:5).
With the weeping of Jazer - That is, I will pour out the same lamentation for the vine of Sibmah which I do for Jazer; implying that it would be deep and bitter sorrow (see Jeremiah 48:32).
I will water thee with my tears - Indicating the grievous calamities that were coming upon those places, on account of the pride of the nation. They were to Isaiah foreign nations, but he had a heart that could feel for their calamities.
For the shouting for thy summer fruits - The shouting attending the ingathering of the harvest (note, Isaiah 9:3). The word used here (הידד hēydâd), denotes, properly, a joyful acclamation, a shout of joy or rejoicing, such as was manifested by the vintager and presser of grapes Jeremiah 25:30; Jeremiah 48:33; or such as was made by the warrior Jeremiah 51:14. Here it means, that in the time when they would expect the usual shout of the harvest, it should not be heard, but instead, thereof, there should be the triumph of the warrior. Literally, 'upon thy summer fruits, and upon thy harvests has the shouting fallen;' that is, the shout of the warrior has fallen upon that harvest instead of the rejoicing of the farmer. So Jeremiah evidently understands it Jeremiah 48:32 : 'The spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits, and upon thy vintage.' Lowth proposes here a correction of the Hebrew text, but without necessity or authority.
With the weeping "As with the weeping" - For בבכי bibechi, a MS. reads בכי bechi. In Jeremiah 48:32, it is מבכי mibbechi. The Septuagint read כבכי kibeki, as with weeping, which I follow.
For thy summer fruits and for thy harvest is fallen "And upon thy vintage the destroyer hath fallen" - ועל קצירך הידד נפל veal ketsirech heidad naphal. In these few words there are two great mistakes, which the text of Jeremiah 48:32 rectifies. For קצירך ketsirech, it has בצירך betsirech; and for הידד heidad, שדד shoded; both which corrections the Chaldee in this place confirms. As to the first,
"Hesebon and Eleale, and
The flowery dale of Sibmah, clad with vines,"
were never celebrated for their harvests; it was the vintage that suffered by the irruption of the enemy; and so read the Septuagint and Syriac. הידד heidad is the noisy acclamation of the treaders of the grapes. And see what sense this makes in the literal rendering of the Vulgate: super messem tuam vox calcantium irruit, "upon thy harvest the voice of the treaders rushes." The reading in Jeremiah 48:32 is certainly right, שדד נפל shoded naphal, "the destroyer hath fallen." The shout of the treaders does not come in till the next verse; in which the text of Isaiah in its turn mends that of Jeremiah 48:33, where instead of the first הידד heidad, "the shout," we ought undoubtedly to read, as here, הדרך haddorech, "the treader."
Therefore I will (k) bewail with the weeping of Jazer the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for the shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy (l) harvest is fallen.
(k) He shows that their plague was so great that it would have moved any man to lament with them, as in (Psalm 141:5).
(l) The enemies are come upon you, and shout for joy when they carry your conveniences from you as in (Jeremiah 48:33).
Therefore I will bewail with the weeping of Jazer the vine of Sibmah,.... That is, bewail the one, as he had done the other, both places with the fruits about them being destroyed by the enemy; or "therefore with weeping I will bewail" (most vehemently lament, an usual Hebraism) "Jazer", and "the vine of Sibmah": the prophet here represents the Moabites weeping for their vines more especially, they being a people addicted to drunkenness, in which their father was begotten; hence Bacchus is said to be the founder of many of their cities, see Jeremiah 48:32. The Targum is,
"as I have brought armies against Jazer, so will I bring slayers against Sibmah;''
I will water thee with my tears: shed abundance of them, see Psalm 6:6,
O Heshbon, and Elealeh; perhaps alluding to the fishponds, in the former, Song 7:4 of these places; see Gill on Isaiah 15:4,
for the shouting for thy summer fruits, and for thy harvest, is fallen; is ceased, so as not to be heard; namely, the singing and shouting which used to be made by labourers, while they were gathering the summer fruits, or reaping the harvest, with which they amused and diverted themselves, and their fellow labourers, and so their time and their work went on more pleasantly; or else that great joy and shouting they expressed when all was ended, something of which nature is still among us at this day; but now in Moab it was at an end, because the enemy had destroyed both their summer fruits and harvest; though Jarchi and Kimchi interpret this shouting of the enemy, of the spoilers and plunderers, upon their summer fruits and harvest, when they destroyed them; and so the Targum,
"upon thy harvest, and upon thy vintage, spoilers have fallen;''
so Noldius (g) renders the words, "for upon thy summer fruits, and upon thy harvest, the shouting shall fall"; that is, the shouting of the enemy, spoiling their fruits and their harvest; and this seems to be the true sense, since it agrees with Jeremiah 48:32 and the ceasing of the other kind of shouting is observed in the next verse Isaiah 16:10.
(g) Ebr Concord. Part p. 253.
I--will bewail for its desolation, though I belong to another nation (see on Isaiah 15:5).
with . . . weeping of Jazer--as Jazer weeps.
shouting for . . . fallen--rather, "Upon thy summer fruits and upon thy luxuriant vines the shouting (the battle shout, instead of the joyous shout of the grape-gatherers, usual at the vintage) is fallen" (Isaiah 16:10; Jeremiah 25:30; Jeremiah 51:14). In the parallel passage (Jeremiah 48:32) the words substantially express the same sense. "The spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits."
The beauties of nature and fruitfulness of the land, which come into the possession of any nation, are gifts from the riches of divine goodness, remnants of the paradisaical commencement of the history of man, and types of its paradisaical close; and for this very reason they are not matters of indifference to the spirit of prophecy. And for the same reason, it is not unworthy of a prophet, who predicts the renovation of nature and the perfecting of it into the beauty of paradise, to weep over such a devastation as that of the Moabitish vineyards which was now passing before his mind (cf., Isaiah 32:12-13). "Therefore I bemoan the vines of Sibmah with the weeping of Jazer; I flood thee with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh, that Hdad hath fallen upon thy fruit-harvest and upon thy vintage." A tetrastich, the Hebrew equivalent, in measure and movement, of a sapphic strophe. The circumstantiality of the vision is here swallowed up again by the sympathy of the prophet; and the prophecy, which is throughout as truly human as it is divine, becomes soft and flowing like an elegy. The prophet mingles his tears with the tears of Jazer. Just as the latter weeps for the devastated vines of Sibmah, so does he also weep. The form אריּוך, transposed from ארוּיך = ארוּך (cf., Ewald, 253, a, where it is explained as being a rare "voluntative" formation), corresponds to the elegiac tone of the whole strophe. Heshbon and Elealeh, those closely connected cities, with their luxuriant fields (shedemoth, Isaiah 16:8), are now lying in ruins; and the prophet waters them with tears, because hedad has fallen upon the fruit-harvest and vintage of both the sister cities. In other instances the term kâtzı̄r is applied to the wheat-harvest; but here it is used in the same sense as bâtzı̄r, to which it is preferred on account of Isaiah's favourite alliteration, viz., with kaytz (compare, for example, the alliteration of mistor with sēther in Isaiah 4:6). That it does not refer to the wheat-harvest here, but to the vintage, which was nearly coincident with the fruit-harvest (which is called kaytz, as in Isaiah 28:4), is evident from the figure suggested in the word hēdâd, which was the shout raised by the pressers of the grapes, to give the time for moving their feet when treading out the wine (Isaiah 16:10; Jeremiah 25:30). A hēdâd of this kind had fallen upon the rich floors of Heshbon-Elealeh, inasmuch as they had been trodden down by enemies - a Hedad, and yet no Hedad, as Jeremiah gives it in a beautiful oxymoron (Jeremiah 48:33), i.e., no joyous shout of actual grape-treaders.
Sibmah - I will bewail Sibmah, as I did bewail Jazer, which was destroyed before Sibmah. Fallen - Those joyful shouts which were customary in the time of harvest and vintage, shall cease.
*More commentary available at chapter level.