Refresh my bowels in the Lord (Isaiah 16)

I probably should have combined Isaiah chapter 16 with the last chapter, because this is all stuff about Moab with not a lot to say about it. At first, it seems like Isaiah is talking about the end of the destruction from the last chapter, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows, because as the chapter goes on, it sounds like famine still remains, and people continue in mourning. In the end, there will be survivors, but very few.

I should say a word about the noted absurdity in verse eleven, because yes, it definitely does sound absurd. This is a cultural thing among ancient Jews (I think Paul somewhere says something similar in a couple of his letters) that they thought of the emotional center of the body was in the guts, perhaps even literally the bowels. It's perhaps a little less absurd sounding if you replace "bowels" with "heart", as some translations do in order to get across the cultural meaning instead of a literal translation of "bowels" or sometimes "inmost parts". This Hebrew word is actually sometimes used for "uterus" in women, actually (well, at least in Ruth 1:11 in the Bible) so it's meaning may not be fully clear.