raisin cake: dried grapes pressed into a dense, sweet block that keeps and travels well
This word names a food, and the pressing is what makes it that food. Grapes were dried in the sun into raisins, and the raisins were then packed and pressed into a solid cake, compact enough to carry on a journey and firm enough to keep for months. Loose dried grapes (צַמּוּק) are one thing; a block of them pressed hard together is another, and this is the word for the block. It is the grape counterpart of the pressed fig cake (דְּבֵלָה).
That kind of food was valuable. Sweetness was scarce, and a cake like this packed a great deal of energy into something small and durable, which made it a natural gift at a celebration, a natural provision for the road, and a natural thing to hand someone who had collapsed and needed reviving.
The word itself carries no mood. It names the food, and the surrounding verses supply the feeling:
- handed out to a whole crowd at a national celebration, one to every man and woman
- called for by someone weak with longing who needs to be propped up
- loved alongside other gods, so that loving the cakes becomes a picture of unfaithfulness
- mourned as the prized produce of a Moabite town whose vineyards have been wrecked
Because the word is rare and the object itself dropped out of everyday life, its exact sense was already slipping by the time the Bible was translated into Greek: those translators reached for several different general words for cake, and in one place read the Hebrew letters as a word for people instead.
Nuances
Whether Isaiah 16:7 reads "the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth" or "the men of Kir-heres," as the parallel oracle in Jeremiah 48:31 does.
- contestedKeep the Hebrew text of Isaiah: the lament is for Kir-hareseth's famed pressed raisin cakes, which suits the destroyed vineyards described in the following verses.; BDB, s.v. אֲשִׁישָׁה
- contestedRead "the men of Kir-heres" with the parallel in Jeremiah 48:31, the Septuagint ("the inhabitants"), and the Targum ("men").; HALOT, s.v. אָשִׁישׁ / אֲשִׁישָׁה
- minorityRead "the foundations" of the city laid bare, from the masculine byform; now largely abandoned.; Gesenius, Thesaurus, s.v. אָשִׁישׁ (as cited in BDB)