Chapter 15

What burden for Moab? Ar Moab has fallen in a night, and all is still; Moab’s battlements have fallen in a night, and all is still!

Prince1 and people of Dibon have gone up to the hill-shrines to lament; on Nabo and on Medaba, Moab cries aloud, every head cropped, every beard shaved in mourning.

In the streets, men walk girded with sackcloth; house-top and square echo with loud crying, that breaks into tears.

The dirge goes up from Hesebon and Eleale, so loud that Jasa hears it; well may the warriors of Moab cry out; the very soul of Moab utters a cry.

My heart laments for Moab, once ringed with walled cities as far as Segor; Segor that now moans like a full-grown heifer.2 There is weeping on the slopes of Luith; along the Oronaim road they wail aloud for misery.

The waters of Nemrim will turn into desert; old grass has withered, new grass has failed, and their banks are green no more.

Heavy their reckoning, to match the abundance of their riches; a nation in exile, carried away to the Vale of Willows.

A cry goes up all about the frontiers of Moab; Gallim echoes the lament, and the well of Elim hears the sound of it.

Dibon’s waters already swollen with blood; and still for Dibon I have perils in store, lions to meet the fugitives, the remnant that is left in the land of Moab.