Isaiah 15:3
In its streets they wear sackcloth; on the rooftops and in the public squares they all wail, falling down weeping.
Sermons
National DistressR. Tuck Isaiah 15:3
Ar and Kir of MoabIsaiah 15:1-9
God Works in the Night TimeJ. Parker, D. D.Isaiah 15:1-9
National DistressW. Clarkson Isaiah 15:1-9
Oracle Concerning MoabE. Johnson Isaiah 15:1-9
The Moabite StoneProf. S. R. Driver, D. D.Isaiah 15:1-9
The Prophet's Pity for MoabF. Delitzsch.Isaiah 15:1-9














The particular trouble causing such extreme grief was the destruction of the two chief cities of Moab, Ar and Kit. To destroy the capital of a kingdom is to strike the nation at its very heart. Conquerors can dictate peace when the chief city lies at their mercy. Illustrate from the recent German siege of Paris. This chapter vigorously pictures the distress throughout the land when Ar was taken, the rush of people to the border districts, the alarm of those whose property was imperiled, the wail of those who had lost their friends in the strife. Howling, weeping, plucking off the hair, covering with sackcloth, and other signs of despairing grief, were found everywhere; and the cries were all the more bitter because for so many generations Moab had dwelt secure. Here one kind of national distress brings before us that general subject, and sets upon considering -

II. ITS BEARING ON THE POOR. They are always the first to suffer from political or international conditions which affect manufacture, trade, or agriculture. Living upon daily wage, and, when thrifty, only able to provide in limited degrees for depressed times, the poor are most dependent on the preservation of peace, security, order, and mutual confidence. Demagogues urge the poor to a disturbance of social relations, with the promise of material advantage. In the interests of the poor themselves we plead that war, disturbance, revolutionary change, never even temporarily serve their interest. So grievous is the effect of political convulsions on the poor, that no class of the community should more intensely demand the knitting of laud to land by commerce and brotherhood, and the correction of social and political evils by processes which do not disturb the sense of national security. Of the poor the words may well be used, "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength."

II. ITS BEARING ON THE RICH. They are always the aim of attack in lawless times, whether the evil come through aggressive enemies outside the nation, or through turbulent people inside the nation. The one wants "booty," and the other wants excuse for robbery. The rich need national security

(1) for the retention of what they have;

(2) for the increase of what they have;

(3) and for the enjoyment of what they have.

National distress becomes especially afflictive to the rich, because by training and association they are unfitted for self-help when their riches are taken away.

III. ITS MISSION AS SENT BY GOD. It is often that which we find illustrated in the case of Moab. National distress, circumstances that unite the whole land in a common grief, and in a common sense of helplessness, is the Divine corrective of the evils which attend prolonged peace, security, and luxury. Those evils may be traced:

1. In the sphere of men's thought. The material is exaggerated, the unseen and spiritual are at disadvantage, and cannot hold their due place and proportion.

2. In the sphere of social life. In prolonged times of peace and prosperity, the separations between classes of society are grievously widened, and there grows up a painful contrast between the few who are unduly rich and the many who are miserably poor. National distress brings rich and poor together, in mutual dependence and service.

3. In the spheres of religion. Like the voyager, men can easily dismiss the thought of God when, for long times together, seas are calm and heavens are clear; but when the skies are black, and the wild waves shake the frail ship, and fear whitens every face, the soul begins to cry for a sight of God and a touch of his protecting hand. We are with God as our little children are with their mothers. They run about and play, taking little heed of her, until the head aches, and the pulse is high, and pain wearies; and then there is nobody in all the world will do but their mother. National distress brings nations back to the thought and love of God. The atheist, the agnostic, and the secularist have their chance when the sun shines; nobody wants such vain helpers when the tempests rage. Then nobody will do but the God of our fathers.

IV. ITS SHAME, IF CAUSED BY MAN'S WILFULNESS OR MAN'S NEGLECT. And these are too often the immediate causes of national distress. War is almost always the issue of somebody's willfulness or masterfulness. Nobody would need to go to war if they did not hanker after something to which they had no right, or were not compelled to resist these envious, masterful folk. And such distresses as come by prevailing disease are usually traceable to men's neglectings of social and family and household duty. God makes even man's errors and sins serve his purpose, but he never ceases to declare woe unto him by whom the offence cometh. - R.T.

He is gone up to Bajith, and to Dibon, the high places, to weep.
We have a picture of men going to old altars, and finding there nothing but silence. Bajith may be regarded as the temple of the Moabite god.

1. So they were reduced to a state of helplessness; their very gods had forsaken them, and had thus revealed their own character as deities. It is under such circumstances — namely, of desertion and sorrow — that men find out what their religion is really worth. The Lord taunts all the heathen nations because their gods forsook them in the hour of calamity. One prophet exclaims, "Thy calf hath cast thee off, O Samaria." The Lord Himself is represented as going up and down throughout the temples of heathenism, mocking and taunting the gods with which they were filled, because they were merely ornamental or decorative gods, and were utterly without power to assuage the sorrow of the human heart.

2. Whilst, however, all this is true of heathenism, there is a sense in which even Christian men may go back to old altars and find them forsaken. The Lord, the living One, the Father of the universe, is not pledged to abide at the altar forever to await the return of the prodigal. In the very first book of the Bible we read, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." There is a day of grace, so measurement can be determined with sufficient nearness to excite alarm, lest its golden hours should be lost. When the door is once shut it will not be opened again. Men may so live that when they go to the sanctuary itself, where the sweetest Gospel is preached in all its purity and nobleness, they find no comfort in the place that is devoted to consolation. The fault is to be found in themselves; they have sinned away their opportunities, they have enclosed themselves within walls of adamant, they have betaken themselves to the worship of their own vanity and the pursuit of their own selfish purposes, so that when they return to the house of God they find that the Lord has abandoned His temple. "They shall call upon Me, and I will not answer." This is more than silence; it is silence aggravated, silence intensified, silence increased into burdensomeness.

(J. Parlour, D. D.)

The sorrow of those who mourn is represented by a very, graphic figure: — "On all their heads shall be baldness, and every beard cut off." The primary reference is probably to some sacrificial ceremony. At a very early period baldness was regarded as a symbol of intensest sorrow amongst Eastern nations. Baldness was forbidden to Israel, for the probable reason that it was identified with the sacrificial worship of heathen deities. The picture of lamentation is continued in the third verse. In Eastern countries, when men were afflicted with great sorrow, they betook themselves to the fiat roofs of their houses, and there publicly and loudly wailed on account of their agony.

(J. Parlour, D. D.)

People
Isaiah, Zoar
Places
Ar, Beer-elim, Brook of the Willows, Dibon, Eglaim, Elealeh, Heshbon, Horonaim, Jahaz, Kir, Luhith, Medeba, Moab, Nebo, Nimrim, Zoar
Topics
Abundantly, Bitter, Broad, Broadways, Covering, Crying, Dissolved, Dress, Gird, Girded, Haircloth, Houses, Housetops, Howl, Howleth, Melted, Melts, Out-places, Pinnacles, Places, Profusely, Prostrate, Public, Roofs, Sackcloth, Squares, Streets, Tears, Themselves, Tops, Wail, Waileth, Wailing, Wails, Wear, Weeping
Outline
1. The lamentable state of Moab

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 15:3

     5174   prostration
     5506   roof
     5952   sorrow
     6742   sackcloth and ashes

Isaiah 15:2-3

     5198   weeping
     5419   mourning

Library
The Sea of Sodom
The bounds of Judea, on both sides, are the sea; the western bound is the Mediterranean,--the eastern, the Dead sea, or the sea of Sodom. This the Jewish writers every where call, which you may not so properly interpret here, "the salt sea," as "the bituminous sea." In which sense word for word, "Sodom's salt," but properly "Sodom's bitumen," doth very frequently occur among them. The use of it was in the holy incense. They mingled 'bitumen,' 'the amber of Jordan,' and [an herb known to few], with
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Tiglath-Pileser iii. And the Organisation of the Assyrian Empire from 745 to 722 B. C.
TIGLATH-PILESER III. AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE FROM 745 to 722 B.C. FAILURE OF URARTU AND RE-CONQUEST Of SYRIA--EGYPT AGAIN UNITED UNDER ETHIOPIAN AUSPICES--PIONKHI--THE DOWNFALL OF DAMASCUS, OF BABYLON, AND OF ISRAEL. Assyria and its neighbours at the accession of Tiglath-pileser III.: progress of the Aramaeans in the basin of the Middle Tigris--Urartu and its expansion into the north of Syria--Damascus and Israel--Vengeance of Israel on Damascus--Jeroboam II.--Civilisation
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 7

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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