Isaiah 16 - Introduction

Isaiah 15, 16. Oracle on Moab. In Isaiah 16:13 f. we read that the preceding prophecy had been spoken in time past: now it is confirmed, and its fulfilment exactly dated. The natural meaning of this is that the main body of the oracle had been uttered some time previously. Very few accept the view that Isaiah himself wrote it. It is generally thought that he quotes the work of an older prophet and endorses it. This is suggested by the language of Isaiah 16:13 f., which does not favour the view that its author also wrote the main body of the prophecy. The style of the prophecy is archaic and tedious, and there are many peculiar forms in the language. The sympathetic tone has no parallel in Isaiah, and the minute knowledge of the topography of Moab is rather improbable in a city prophet. If this view is correct, it is still uncertain when the original prophecy was spoken. It must be later than the time of Ahab, since cities are represented as belonging to Moab which, as we know from the Moabite Stone, were recovered by Mesha. Many think the original occasion was a conquest of Moab by Jeroboam II, which, though not expressly mentioned, is implied in the history. Since Judah is supposed to be able to protect the fugitives of Moab, she must have been fairly strong at the time, and this would suit the reign of Uzziah, which was for the most part contemporary with that of Jeroboam II. Isaiah may have republished the oracle with the appendix shortly before Sargon's campaign against Ashdod in 711, when Moab was intriguing against Assyria with Egypt and Philistia, or he might have done so shortly before Sennacherib's invasion in 701. Several scholars believe that the original prophecy is post-exilic. Gray (ICC) analyses into an elegy consisting of Isaiah 15:1 a, Isaiah 16:1, and a prophetic interpolation containing Isaiah 15:9 b - Isaiah 16:5; Isaiah 16:12. The elegy he thinks has reference to the Nabatæ an conquest of Moab in the fifth century. The oracle forms the basis of the much longer prophecy in Jeremiah 48.