What does Isaiah 15:7 mean?

Isaiah's oracle from the Lord continues to describe the future southward travel of the Moabite refugees. They are coming from their destroyed cities in the north toward the city of Zoar in the nation of Edom, just south of the Dead Sea (Isaiah 15:5).

Their arrival at a place Isaiah knew as the waters of Nimrim is met with more despair. Hoping to find grass and water for their animals at this oasis, the people instead found it dried up and all the greenery dead. Modern scholars call this location the Wadi en-Numeirah, about ten miles, or sixteen kilometers, from the southern edge of the Dead Sea (Isaiah 15:6).

This verse implies that not finding water at this crucial point in the trip may mean that some of the refugees had to leave their animals behind. This would mean they would no longer have them to haul the belongings they had brought from home. As a result, the people may have had to carry their possessions themselves on foot. That, of course, would mean many of those possessions would have to be discarded. These few things they carried were all they had left in the world, their life savings. Those who measured their existence in the "abundance of their possessions," as Jesus described it (Luke 12:15), must have reached the low point of their lives. Jesus said this is the sorry fate of everyone who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God (Luke 12:21).

Isaiah concludes that they will carry these possessions over the "Book of the Willows," or the "Ravine of the Poplars," depending on the translation. Scholars believe this to be the Zered River, the border between Moab and Elim. Reaching it would have finally provided water and brought them close to their destination of the city of Zoar.