The Massacre of Moab (Isaiah 15:8-9)

The God of Abraham was promising to consecrate Lot’s firstborn, but the sacrifice would not be substitutionary.

For the introduction to this section (Isaiah 15-16), see Isaiah’s Kill List – Part 2.

The oracle against Moab works through the general themes of the Heptateuch. The final step is missing as a sign that the nation would be cut off like Adam: Moab would be denied a memorial, given no rest among the tombs of his fathers. Within this structure, the key to this passage is its Leviticus theme.

The internal structure of Cycle 2D3 works through the Pentateuch as a warning of Levitical judgment.

CYCLE 2D3
Ascension/Presentation – Leviticus:
The Massacre of Moab

(Isaiah 15:8-9)

TRANSCENDENCE
Their cry reaches to the borders of the nation (15:8a)
(Genesis)

HIERARCHY
even to its farthest springs (15:8b)
(Exodus)

ETHICS
The city’s name is turned to blood (15:9a)
(Leviticus)

OATH/SANCTIONS
God will curse it with even more bloodshed (15:9b)
(Numbers)

SUCCESSION
Lions will pick off the survivors (15:9c)
(Deuteronomy)

The Levitical theme of 2D3 explains the imagery of borders, water, and blood. The Ascension offering described in Leviticus 1 was a symbolic Presentation of the Creation Week carried out in flesh and blood.¹ As an act of divinely appointed substitutionary atonement, the Promised Land stood in for the actual dry land of the world (see pages 94-98). In turn, this ascension (whole burnt offering) was a detailed development of the ascensions offered by Noah (Genesis 8:20-22). The Levitical variant bloodied the cosmos in miniature in order to avert the actual destruction of the cosmos. This completed the mediation as a threefold ziggurat: the actual cosmos (World); the Promised Land and Gentile Sea (Land); and the entire cosmos represented in the Tabernacle (Garden).

In Leviticus 1:5b-6, the dry land was symbolized by the Bronze Altar. Blood was dashed against its sides and dribbled down to its base, as the waters ran off the earth on Day 3 and at the Flood. Then the animal was skinned and cut into pieces. The flesh and blood of the animal represented the world’s first fruit bearers, fruit trees and grain plants, which were the foundations for the sacramental bread and wine of the priest-king. In this way, God Himself could turn His plowshare into a sword against humanity—in the way that He killed an animal substitute to cover the sin of Man in Genesis 3.

The counterpart of Day 3 in the Tabernacle pattern was the Bronze Altar as the Land and the Golden Table which “lifted up” the bread and wine that represented the sons of Jacob.

This sacrificial background is necessary to understand the irony intended in this “firstfruits” Cycle. The God of Abraham was promising to consecrate Lot’s firstborn, but the sacrifice would not be substitutionary. Not only would the territory of Moab actually be splashed with blood, but the survivors would be hunted by wild beasts like the desperate remnant of a scattered herd or flock.

The pattern of the Cycle recapitulates the five books of Moses, but does so by highlighting a particular aspect in each case.

• (15:8a) The Genesis Stanza theme is the borders of the seventy nations (Genesis 10). The “Sons of God” in Deuteronomy 32:8 were the Noahic priest-kings of these nations.
  The cry that reached up to heaven in 2D2 (vertically) now extends to the corners of the earth (horizontally). Instead of the altar horns being bloodied and the savor ascending to God, God descends to slaughter the idolaters. This implicit reference to the execution of the priests of Baal who cried out to their god on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:20-40) is made more explicit in 16:12.
• (15:8b) The Exodus Stanza invokes the waters above and below, as does its poetic recounting in Psalm 77:15-20. Eglaim and Beer-Elim are the extremities of Moab, like the “Dan and Beersheba” of Israel. Eglaim (“two pools”) is in the south, and Beer-Elim (“well of the mighty ones”) is in the north (Numbers 21:16-18).
• (15:9a) The Leviticus Stanza draws once again upon the attack against Moab by Israel, Edom, and Judah, which turned out to be a divine trap for the disobedient kings.² The waters sent by the Lord appeared as red as blood in the dawn light (2 Kings 3:22). Here, they actually are blood, and Isaiah deliberately changes the name of the Moabite capital, Dibon, to Dimon, which sounds like dam (blood). The waters must be the Arnon River to its south.
  Edom (“red”) also sounds like “blood,” so this was likely the judgment promised for Moab’s desecration of the grave of the king of Edom, an act condemned in the original prophetic “kill list” of nations (Amos 2:1-3). (See Josiah’s treatment of the graves of the godless and the godly in 2 Kings 23:16-18). Leaving the Edomite king without a memorial would be a fitting retribution against “Isaac’s firstborn” for causing the Moabite king to offer his own firstborn son (2 Kings 3:26-27). Surprisingly, God Himself later offers Edom as a “child sacrifice” for the nations (Isaiah 34).
  In sacrificial terms, pouring out water that turns to blood is a judgment that brings purification (Exodus 4:9), but pouring out the blood of an animal as if it were water is a purification by atonement (Deuteronomy 12:16, 25; 15:23). Dibon was located east of the Jordan River. In Egypt, the blood of Passover was followed by the water of the Red Sea. But in Jericho, the water of the Jordan was followed by the blood of holy war.
• (15:9b) The Numbers Stanza brings the actual threat of an eye-for-eye judgment of annihilation upon Moab. Israel’s sin with Moabite and Midianite women (at the hand of Balaam who had been hired by Balak, the king of Moab) brought the cutting off of the old generation (Numbers 25:1; 31:16). But their children were spared in order to keep the promises to Abraham. There would be no such mercy for the survivors of Moab.
• (15:9c) The Deuteronomy Stanza brings no promises for the land of Moab, only a decree of utter destruction. God promised to clear the wild beasts from the land if Israel were faithful, but if not, the beasts would return (Deuteronomy 7:22; 32:24; Leviticus 26:22; 1 Kings 13:20-25; 2 Kings 2:23-24; 17:25; Ezekiel 14:21; Revelation 6:8). Not only would the ruler and his sons be cut off (Amos 2:3), but even the remnant would be denied a memorial, devoured by the king of the beasts.

Details of Book 1 of The Shape of Isaiah are here.

1. See James B. Jordan, Re-creation in the Ascension Offering.
2. For more discussion of these events, see Peter J. Leithart, 1 & 2 Kings, 178-183.