Jeremiah Weeps for the Vine of Sibmah Spreading Over the Sea of Jazer in Moab

Jeremiah 48:32 incorporates Israelite agricultural imagery into the long oracle against Moab: "O vine of Sibmah, I will weep for thee with the weeping of Jazer: thy plants are gone over the sea, they reach even to the sea of Jazer: the spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits and upon thy vintage." The verse echoes Isaiah 16:8-9 with the same lament. The Moabite plateau wine country around Heshbon and Sibmah was famous throughout the ancient Near East. The prophet imagines the vines reaching the lake or marshland near Jazer in the Transjordan highlands — pre-judgment fertility about to be cut down by the Babylonian sweep that destroyed Moab as a kingdom.

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