(36) Mine heart shall sound for Moab like pipes . . .--The words reproduce Isaiah 16:11. His heart becomes, as it were, musical in its groans and sighs. He cannot look on the panic-stricken and mourning city without sharing in its misery. In the baldness (Jeremiah 7:29; Jeremiah 16:6), the clipped beard, the cuttings (Jeremiah 16:6; Jeremiah 41:5), the sackcloth (Jeremiah 4:8; Jeremiah 6:26; Joel 1:8) we have the wonted signs of mourning for the dead. The "pipe" is chosen rather than the harp, as in Isaiah 16:11, because it had come to be the recognised music for funerals (so in Matthew 9:23).Verse 36-42. - The description of Moab's lamentations continued. Verse 36. - Based on Isaiah 16:11; Isaiah 15:7. Like pipes. Isaiah has, "like the harp [or, 'lute']." The pipe, or flute, was specially used at funeral ceremonies (Matthew 9:23; Luke 7:32), and therefore, perhaps, seemed to Jeremiah more appropriate. Because the riches, etc. This is, no doubt, what we should have expected, but this is not what Jeremiah wrote; "because" should rather be therefore. Jeremiah simply transferred a clause (substantially at least) from his original, Isaiah 15:7, but into a context where it stands rather less naturally. The meaning of the words in Isaiah is that, the desolation being so great, the Moabites shall carry away as much of their goods as they can. In this new context, however, we can only explain this unexpected "therefore" by referring to a habit of the Israelitish mind by which that which contributed to a result was regarded as worked purposely for that result. Good instances of this habit are Genesis 18:5; Psalm 45:3; Psalm 51:6; comp. Winer's 'New Testament Grammar' (Clark), pp. 573, 574, especially note 1 on p. 574, though the idiom also occurs in Old Testament passages in which the religious view of life is hardly traceable. 48:14-47. The destruction of Moab is further prophesied, to awaken them by national repentance and reformation to prevent the trouble, or by a personal repentance and reformation to prepare for it. In reading this long roll of threatenings, and mediating on the terror, it will be of more use to us to keep in view the power of God's anger and the terror of his judgments, and to have our hearts possessed with a holy awe of God and of his wrath, than to search into all the figures and expressions here used. Yet it is not perpetual destruction. The chapter ends with a promise of their return out of captivity in the latter days. Even with Moabites God will not contend for ever, nor be always wroth. The Jews refer it to the days of the Messiah; then the captives of the Gentiles, under the yoke of sin and Satan, shall be brought back by Divine grace, which shall make them free indeed.Therefore my heart shall sound for Moab like pipes,.... That are sounded on mournful occasions, as at funerals, and the like; see Matthew 9:23. This the prophet said, as Kimchi observes, in the person of the people, the inhabitants of Moab; whose hearts would yearn and sound for the calamities of their country like the doleful sound of minstrels. So the Targum, "therefore the Moabites shall sound in their hearts like a harp:'' and my heart shall sound like pipes for the men of Kirheres; as for the country of Moab in general, so for this principal city, and the inhabitants of it, in particular; See Gill on Isaiah 16:11; because the riches that he hath gotten is perished; either Moab or Kirheres; the abundance of goods they had got together were now lost, falling into the hands of the enemy; and which was matter of lamentation. The Targum is, "for the rest of their substance they had got were spoiled.'' Some understand it of the residue of men that escaped the sword; these perished by famine, or other means; see Isaiah 15:7. |
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