Lime

Lime appears in two prophetic oracles, both of them invoking the heat of the kiln. In each case the substance is the figure for what is left when fire has consumed the body — peoples reduced to ash, bones calcined into white powder.

The Burning of the Peoples

Isaiah's oracle against the nations gathered around Jerusalem closes with the picture of fire that leaves nothing standing. The doomed peoples are likened to fuel that burns to slag: "And the peoples will be as the burnings of lime, as thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire" (Isa 33:12). The image draws on the limekiln — the slow, total combustion that turns stone to powder — and on the brushwood that flares and is gone.

The Crime of Moab

Amos's oracle against Moab fixes on a single act: the desecration of a royal corpse by fire. The transgression that triggers Yahweh's judgment is named plainly: "Thus says Yahweh: For three transgressions of Moab, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment; because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime" (Am 2:1). The Moabite king's vengeance went past death — burning the bones of his enemy until they were calcined to lime. The oracle treats this not as a feud between Moab and Edom but as an offense against Yahweh that draws the judgment of the surrounding nations down on Moab itself.