7 Therefore they will carry away the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have stored up, over the brook of the willows.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Therefore what every one hath left. [1] This corresponds to the ordinary expression, (Ce qu'il aura espargne,) Whatever he shall have spared. He means the riches that are laid up, and describes what usually happens in countries which are invaded by an enemy. All the inhabitants are wont to convey their riches elsewhere, and to lay them up in some safe place, that they may afterwards bring them back when peace has been restored. To the brook of the willows. He means that they will have no storehouse, no fortress in which they can lay them up with safety; so that they will be compelled to hide them among the willows. This certainly is the lowest wretchedness, when the enemy is attacking us, and we can find no storehouse for laying up those things which we have collected with great industry. These willows were probably situated in some remote and sequestered place. Others explain it as referring to enemies, that they will bring the fruits of their robbery to the brook, to divide among themselves the general plunder.
1 - Therefore the abundance they have gotten. -- Eng. Ver. Therefore the substance which they have saved. -- Stock The riches which they have gained. -- Lowth
Therefore, the abundance they have gotten - Their wealth they shall remove from a place that is utterly burned up with drought, where the waters and the grass fail, to another place where they may find water.
To the brook of willows - Margin, 'The valley of the Arabians.' The Septuagint renders it, 'I will lead them to the valley of the Arabians, and they shall take it.' So Saadias. It might, perhaps, be called the valley of the Arabians, because it was the boundary line between them and Arabia on the south. Lowth renders it, 'To Babylon.' The probability is, that the prophet refers to some valley or brook that was called the brook of the willows, from the fact that many willows grew upon its bank. Perhaps it was the small stream which flows into the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, and which forms the boundary of Arabia Petrea of the province of Jebal. They withdrew toward the south, where toward Petra or Sela they had their property in herds Isaiah 16:1, for probably the invader came from the north, and drove them in this direction. Lowth, and most commentators, suppose that 'they' in this verse refers to the enemies of Moab, and that it means that they would carry away the property of Moab to some distant place. But the more probable meaning is, that when the waters of the Nimrim should fail, they would remove to a place better watered; that is, they would leave their former abode, and wander away. It is an image of the desolation that was coming upon the land.
"Shall perish" - אבדו abadu or אבדה abadeh. This word seems to have been lost out of the text: it is supplied by the parallel place, Jeremiah 48:36. The Syriac expresses it by עבר aber, praeteriit, "he hath passed;" and the Chaldee by יתבזזון yithbazezun, diripientur.
To the brook of the willows "To the valley of willows" - That is, to Babylon. Hieron. and Jarchi in loc., both referring to Psalm 137:2. So likewise Prideaux, Le Clerc, etc.
Therefore the abundance they have gained, and that which they have laid up, shall they carry away to the (i) brook of the willows.
(i) To hide themselves and their goods there.
Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have laid up,.... The great substance which the Moabites had got, and hoarded up:
shall they carry away to the brook of the willows; either the Moabites should carry their substance to some brook, it may be near Nimrim, where many willows grew, and cast it into the brook, or lay it by the brook side, in some private place, or under and among the willows, to preserve it from the enemy; or else the meaning is, that their enemies should take what they had with a great deal of labour got, and with a great deal of care had laid up, and carry it to the brook of the willows, some place without the city, and there divide it; or to the valley of the Arabians (q), as some render it, some part of Arabia lying between Moab and Babylon, whither they might carry it, in order to the conveyance of it into their own country at a proper time: it may be observed, that the country of Moab came after this into the hands of the Arabians; and, according to Jerom, the valley of Arabia lay in the way from Moab to Assyria; but it may be rendered "the valley of the willows", and design the land of Babylon, or Babylon itself, which was built in a plain, or on a flat by the river Euphrates, out of which many canals and rivulets were cut and derived, near to which willows in great abundance grew; as they usually do in marshy and watery places; hence the Jews in Babylon are said to hang their harps upon the willows which were by its rivers; so Jarchi thinks the land of Babylon is meant, and compares it with Psalm 137:1 which sense is approved of by Bochart and Vitringa. The Septuagint version is,
"I will bring upon the valley the Arabians, and they shall take it;''
and the Targum is,
"their border, which is by the western sea, shall be taken from them.''
(q) "in vallem Arabum", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius.
Therefore--because of the devastation of the land.
abundance--literally, "that which is over and above" the necessaries of life.
brook of . . . willows--The fugitives flee from Nimrim, where the waters have failed, to places better watered. Margin has "valley of Arabians"; that is, to the valley on the boundary between them and Arabia-PetrÃ&brvbr;a; now Wady-el Arabah. "Arabia" means a "desert."
As Moabitis has thus become a great scene of conflagration, the Moabites cross the border and fly to Idumaea. The reason for this is given in sentences which the prophet again links on to one another with the particle ci (for). "Therefore what has been spared, what has been gained, and their provision, they carry it over the willow-brook. For the scream has gone the round in the territory of Moab; the wailing of Joab resounds to Eglayim, and his wailing to Beeer-Elim. For the waters of Dimon are full of blood: for I suspend over Dimon a new calamity, over the escaped of Moab a lion, and over the remnant of the land." Yithrâh is what is superfluous or exceeds the present need, and pekuddâh (lit. a laying up, depositio) that which has been carefully stored; whilst ‛âsâh, as the derivative passage, Jeremiah 48:36, clearly shows (although the accusative in the whole of Isaiah 15:7 is founded upon a different view: see Rashi), is an attributive clause (what has been made, worked out, or gained). All these things they carry across nachal hâ‛arâbim, i.e., not the desert-stream, as Hitzig, Maurer, Ewald, and Knobel suppose, since the plural of ‛arâbâh is ‛arâboth, but either the Arab stream (lxx, Saad.), or the willow-stream, torrens salicum (Vulg.). The latter is more suitable to the connection; and among the rivers which flow to the south of the Arnon from the mountains of the Moabitish highlands down to the Dead Sea, there is one which is called Wadi Sufsaf, i.e., willow-brook (Tzaphtzphh is the name of a brook in Hebrew also), viz., the northern arm of the Seil el-Kerek. This is what we suppose to be intended here, and not the Wadi el-Ahsa, although the latter (probably the biblical Zered
(Note: Hence the Targ. II renders nachal zered "the brook of the willows." See Buxtorf, Lex. chald. s.v. Zerad.))
is the boundary river on the extreme south, and separates Moab from Edom (Kerek from Gebal: see Ritter, Erdk. xv 1223-4). Wading through the willow-brook, they carry their possessions across, and hurry off to the land of Edom, for their own land has become the prey of the foe throughout its whole extent, and within its boundaries the cry of wailing passes from Eglayim, on the south-west of Ar, and therefore not far from the southern extremity of the Dead Sea (Ezekiel 47:10), as far as Beer-elim, in the north-east of the land towards the desert (Numbers 21:16-18; עד must be supplied: Ewald, 351, a), that is to say, if we draw a diagonal through the land, from one end to the other. Even the waters of Dibon, which are called Dimon here to produce a greater resemblance in sound to dâm, blood, and by which we are probably to understand the Arnon, as this was only a short distance off (just as in Judges 5:19 the "waters of Megiddo" are the Kishon), are full of blood,
(Note: דם מלאוּ, with munach (which also represents the metheg) at the first syllable of the verb (compare Isaiah 15:4, לּו ירעה, with mercha), according to Vened. 1521, and other good editions. This is also grammatically correct.)
so that the enemy must have penetrated into the very heart of the land in his course of devastation and slaughter. But what drives them across the willow-brook is not this alone; it is as if they forebode that what has hitherto occurred is not the worst or the last. Jehovah suspends (shith, as in Hosea 6:11) over Dibon, whose waters are already reddened with blood, nōsâphōth, something to be added, i.e., a still further judgment, namely a lion. The measure of Moab's misfortunes is not yet full: after the northern enemy, a lion will come upon those that have escaped by flight or have been spared at home (on the expression itself, compare Isaiah 10:20; Isaiah 37:32, and other passages). This lion is no other than the basilisk of the prophecy against Philistia, but with this difference, that the basilisk represents one particular Davidic king, whilst the lion is Judah generally, whose emblem was the lion from the time of Jacob's blessing, in Genesis 49:9.
They - Their enemies. Brook - Possibly he means some such river which ran into Euphrates, and so gave them opportunity of carrying their spoils by water unto Babylon.
*More commentary available at chapter level.