Isaiah 16:10
10 And gladness [simchah] is taken
away ['acaph], and joy [giyl] out of the plentiful field [karmel]; and in the vineyards [kerem] there shall be no singing [ranan],
neither shall there be shouting [ruwa`]: the
treaders [darak] shall tread out [darak] no wine [yayin] in their
presses [yeqeb]; I have made their vintage
shouting [heydad] to cease [shabath]. KJV-Interlinear
10 And gladness and joy are taken
away from the fruitful field; In the vineyards also there will be no cries of
joy or jubilant shouting, No treader treads out wine in the presses, For I have
made the shouting to cease. NASB
The gladness, ‘simchah,’
is a reference to the continual happiness that people have when engaged with
the things that they deem most important to them.
And in this case, the
vineyards and prosperity with which they had become accustomed to despite the
horrible trouble that the world will be suffering from during the Tribulation.
These are end times
prophecies, and here we can see the priorities that people have even when in
the midst of chaos.
We already know several
things.
First, that before the
Rapture, there will be phenomenal economic prosperity where even the vines of Edom
will be distributed and used across the oceans in foreign lands.
Second, we know that
after the Rapture, and during the Tribulation, there will be a huge economic
downturn caused by government regulations and policies, caused by famine,
causes by storms and various events of nature.
Third, we know that
people place their faith in an anti-christ, but more than that, they place
their hopes and priorities in the things of this world, things that they have
like property, production, profits, and all the things that people generally
have when they are prosperous like clothes, toys, etc.
But those things will fade
away and their happiness will fade as well as the objects of their happiness
rapidly disappear.
The pride of Moab is in
her arrogance, in her vineyards and its production, or the national economy
from whatever sources that it was derived.
But as those things decline, so too will the happiness of the people,
until there is no more happiness, but only sorrow, no more smiles or laughter,
but only tears and anxiety.
And to top it all off,
when the destruction of war does come, everything gets only worse, never to
recover, not even the hope of a recovery.
No vineyards, no
grapes. No grapes, no treading of wine,
no employment. No employment, no wine,
no livelihood, only poverty.
And if your have every
lived in a situation where there is no money, no things, no happiness and only
the pressures of life constantly hounding you, and even worse, then you might
be able to understand the sorrows and grief that, that future generation of
people, whomever they will be, will be experiencing. And the even sadder thing is that their
future will only get worse because they have rejected the only escape that they
have available to them, namely Jesus Christ.
