In the midst of a chain of ‘oracles against the nations’, the prophet’s condemning voice suddenly collapses in anguished weeping as his eye contemplates the fate of Moab. The turn is bewildering. Prophets raised up on their hind legs in full imprecatory mode do not usually cry. There is, as we have been taught deliciously, no crying in baseball. Nor in oracles against the nations.
The explanation for this collapse into tears that I find most persuasive argues that these are crocodile tears. Schadenfreude. A mocking false weeping that ridicules Moab’s fall and delights in it.
This does not make for inspirational reading, not least for those of us who take up and read from the comfort of remote and peaceful easy chairs, fat in the easy luxury of condemning both violence and the longing to see another brought low because our children have never been snatched away, our spouse violated, our home burnt to the ground, Grandpa murdered in the field with hand on plow.
We should at least have eyes wide open to the preferences and biases that accompany us here in this unthreatened place.
If we are able to do so, we may just find it possible to admire the poetry of the Moabite vineyard, fallen into abandoned silence.
For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vines of Sibmah, whose clusters once made drunk the lords of the nations, reached to Jazer and strayed to the desert; their shoots once spread abroad and crossed over the sea.
Therefore I weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vines of Sibmah; I drench you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh; for the shout over your fruit harvest and your grain harvest has ceased.
Joy and gladness are taken away from the fruitful field; and in the vineyards no songs are sung, no shouts are raised; no treader treads out wine in the presses; the vintage-shout is hushed.
Therefore my heart throbs like a harp for Moab, and my very soul for Kir-heres.
Isaiah 16.8-11 (NRSV)
The vineyard metaphor is mainly Zion’s prerogative in this book. If this chapter is suffused with sarcasm, then the image’s redeployment to speak of this near neighbor Moab may be spoken with curled limp and a defiant twinkle in the eye.
Harvest is in agrarian contexts a moment for sweaty labor married to all manner of delights. The whole community throws itself into the once-a-year frenzy of it all. Everything is motion, promise, sunshine, lust, and future. It is a liminal moment, one that could not—must not—last forever, one that is by definition not the normal grind, but one that unites in order eventually to nourish and sustain.
But not in Moab, per the prophet’s eye. Everything there is still. There’s no one about. Grapes pass their moment for plucking and turn fetid. Vines languish, hang, then drop.
One can lament the community’s absence, the missed celebration. Or one can look ahead to bare tables, the dull eyes of hungry children.
The prophet, if the reading I have suggested holds, looks forward to that moment in an ancient enemy’s life.
We have heard of the pride of Moab —how proud he is!— of his arrogance, his pride, and his insolence; his boasts are false.
Therefore let Moab wail, let everyone wail for Moab. Mourn, utterly stricken, for the raisin-cakes of Kir-hareseth.
Isaiah 16.6-7 (NRSV)
Canter Bridge 