“Settled like wine on its dregs”
Moab has been at ease from youth, settled like wine on its dregs; he has not been poured from vessel to vessel or gone into exile. So his flavor has remained the same, and his aroma is unchanged. (Jeremiah 48:11 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A confusing wine metaphor about sediment.
The cultural key
The image is drawn from ancient winemaking. After fermentation, wine sat on its 'dregs' or 'lees', the sediment of dead yeast and grape solids, which for a short while enriched it, but if the wine was left on the lees too long it grew thick, cloudy, oversweet, and eventually foul. So vintners 'racked' good wine, carefully pouring it from one jar to another to leave the sediment behind, again and again, which clarified and refined it. Jeremiah turns this into a portrait of the nation of Moab: unlike Israel and Judah, Moab had never been 'poured from vessel to vessel', never conquered, uprooted, and carried into exile, but had sat undisturbed 'on its dregs' for generations. The result is no compliment: settled and untroubled, Moab has grown complacent, coarse, and spoiled, its 'flavor' unimproved, and now God will finally pour it out. The comfortable life that never got racked has gone to sediment. Read without the winemaking, the metaphor is opaque; with it, ease itself becomes the judgment.
Recovered meaning
Good wine was repeatedly poured off its sediment to refine it; wine left on its dregs turns thick and spoiled. Moab, never conquered or exiled, has sat undisturbed on its dregs and grown complacent and coarse, so its long ease is exposed as a curse, not a blessing.