Jeremiah 48:4

Moab lay east of the Dead Sea, chiefly on the fertile plateau between the Arnon and Zered rivers. Its people descended from Lot, Abraham’s nephew, through his elder daughter (Genesis 19:37). Over the centuries Moab was often Israel’s enemy and sometimes its uneasy ally. Eglon king of Moab oppressed Israel until the LORD raised up Ehud (Judges 3:12–30). Balak of Moab hired Balaam to curse Israel (Numbers 22–24), and in the days of Jehoram and Jehoshaphat Moab rebelled and went to war with Israel (2 Kings 3).

The chief god of Moab was Chemosh. A song from Moses’ day already says, “Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh” (Numbers 21:29), and Solomon in his old age built a high place for “Chemosh, the abomination of Moab” (1 Kings 11:7). The worship of Chemosh could include human sacrifice: when the king of Moab was losing the war of 2 Kings 3, he offered his own son as a burnt offering on the city wall (2 Kings 3:27).

Moab was also rich, from good farmland and trade routes, and very proud. Isaiah says, “We have heard of the pride of Moab; he is very proud” (Isaiah 16:6), and later in this chapter Jeremiah says the same (Jeremiah 48:29–30). He also charges Moab with mocking Israel in its distress (Jeremiah 48:26–27), and Ezekiel records Moab’s contempt for Judah (Ezekiel 25:8–11). These are the reasons for the judgment: pride, idolatry, trust in its own strength, and scorn for God’s people. Other prophets spoke against Moab too (Isaiah 15:1, Amos 2:1–3), and Jeremiah’s oracle fills the whole of Jeremiah 48, one of the longest he gives against any nation.

The chapter belongs to Jeremiah’s prophecies against the nations in Jeremiah 46–51. That collection begins with Egypt in Jeremiah 46, and it comes after his long warnings to Judah and Jerusalem. Placed there, it shows that the God who disciplines his own people also holds the surrounding nations to account, and that he rules all peoples and kingdoms. Jeremiah spoke in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC, as Babylon rose to power. God calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant (Jeremiah 25:9–11), raises up the Chaldeans (Habakkuk 1:6), and passes the cup of his wrath from nation to nation (Jeremiah 25:15–38). These verses never name the invader, but it is most likely the army of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar. Even so, the chapter closes with mercy: “Yet will I bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter days, saith the LORD” (Jeremiah 48:47).

“Woe” translates hôwy, an interjection like “ah!” or “alas!” that voices grief over suffering about to come. Jeremiah announces judgment, and he grieves as he does it, a sorrow that runs through the whole chapter even though Moab had long been Israel’s enemy.

The first three places are among Moab’s chief towns and strongholds. Nebo is a Moabite town or district here. It shares its name with the mountain from which Moses viewed the promised land (Deuteronomy 34:1). Kiriathaim was a major town, named in connection with the tribes settled east of the Jordan. Misgab means “high fort” or “refuge”, a fortified height. Nebo is “spoiled”, plundered and laid waste. Kiriathaim is “confounded and taken”, put to shame and captured. Misgab is “confounded and dismayed”.

The word behind “confounded”, yâbêsh, means to dry up or wither, and also to become weak or be ashamed. Here it is shame: the towns Moab was proud of are disgraced. “Dismayed” is châthath, to be broken down, whether by violence or by confusion and fear, and it most often means to be afraid or discouraged. Even Misgab, the “high fort”, ends in fear. The towns are named one by one to make the judgment concrete and to show that it reaches every part of Moab, its strongholds as well as its open towns. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

The word for praise, tᵉhillâh, means praise or a song of praise. “Praise of Moab” is Moab’s renown, the glory it boasted of and the honour it had among the nations. All of that is ending.

Heshbon was an important city on a main trade route. It had been an Amorite city, later belonged to Moab, and at times was claimed by Reuben. There “they have devised evil” against Moab. The verb châshab means to plot or contrive, to plan something with care, so the attack on Moab is thought out in advance. “They” are Moab’s enemies, most likely the Babylonians and their commanders. Their words are “come, and let us cut it off from being a nation”, and the word for nation, gôwy, means a people, here Moab as a people with its own land and rule. Over time this came to pass. Moab was absorbed into larger empires and disappeared from history as a distinct people.

Madmen, a smaller town, is included to show that the judgment reaches small places as well as great ones. “Thou shalt be cut down” uses dâmam, to be silent, to be still, to stop or perish, so the town is silenced. “The sword shall pursue thee” gives the sword the relentlessness of a hunter.

The enemies plan evil, and God uses their plans to carry out his own sentence. The plotters in Heshbon think they are acting for themselves, but the LORD has spoken first. Scripture’s greatest example of this is the cross, where Jesus was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” and crucified “by wicked hands” (Acts 2:23).

Verses 3 to 5 fill the land with sound. “A voice of crying” is qôwl tsaʻăqâh. Qôwl is a voice, a sound or a proclamation, and tsaʻăqâh is a loud cry of distress, the kind people raise when they need help. The cry comes from Horonaim, a strategic town in southern Moab on a main road, whose Hebrew name Chôrônayim means “double cave-town”. Its cause is “spoiling and great destruction”. “Spoiling” is shôd, violence, ravage and plunder. “Great destruction” is gâdôwl sheber, a great breaking, and sheber means a breaking, an injury or a disaster.

Verse 4 states the result as if it had already happened: “Moab is destroyed.” The verb is shâbar, to break or shatter, the word for something broken in pieces, and Scripture also uses it of what God binds up and heals. “Her little ones have caused a cry to be heard.” The little ones, tsâʻîyr, are the young, the smallest and weakest of Moab, and their cry, zᵉʻâqâh, is an outcry of distress. Their crying is the sharpest sign of how complete the ruin is.

Verse 5 follows the refugees along two roads. “The going up of Luhith” is an ascent. The word maʻăleh means an elevation, a rise or a way up, and Luhith was a climb up to higher ground. Horonaim lay on a way down. Up one road and down the other, “continual weeping”, Bᵉkîy, rises from those who flee, and the noise of their grief never stops. “The enemies have heard a cry of destruction”: the cry uses sheber, the same word as “great destruction” in verse 3, and it carries to the very people who have brought Moab low. Isaiah weeps over Moab with these same two roads, Luhith and Horonaim (Isaiah 15:5).

Verse 6 turns to the people of Moab with three commands: flee, save, be. “Flee” is nûwç, to flee, escape or vanish away. “Save” is mâlaṭ, which in the form used here means to let escape, deliver or save a life, and “your lives” is nap̄šôṯêḵem, their very selves. The only thing left to save is life itself.

Those who escape are to “be like the heath in the wilderness”. The heath, ʻărôwʻêr, is a juniper or some similar bush, and the wilderness, midbâr, is dry, empty country. A lone bush in the desert has no shelter and little water. It is a picture of survivors stripped of their cities, wealth and honour, living exposed in a harsh land, a hard change for a people who once boasted of their fertile fields. Jeremiah later calls God’s people to flee out of Babylon in the same urgent way (Jeremiah 51:6).

Verse 7 gives the reason for all of this. “Thou hast trusted” is bâṭach, a word whose root sense is to hasten for refuge, and which means to trust, to feel secure or confident. Moab took refuge in “thy works and in thy treasures”. Its works, maʻăseh, were its own achievements: fortified cities, military strength and productive land. Its treasures, ʼôwtsâr, were its stored wealth. Trust belongs to the LORD, and Moab gave it to what its own hands had made and gathered. “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7), and “He that trusteth in his riches shall fall” (Proverbs 11:28).

“Thou shalt also be taken” uses lâkad, to catch, capture or seize, as a hunter takes his prey. Then comes the sharpest line in the passage: “Chemosh shall go forth into captivity with his priests and his princes together.” Kᵉmôwsh, the god Moab looked to for protection, is carried off as a captive along with the priests who served him and the princes who ruled in his name. The god who was supposed to save Moab cannot save himself. Isaiah gives the same picture of Babylon’s gods: “Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth”, their images loaded on beasts and carried into captivity (Isaiah 46:1–2). The psalm says of idols that they have mouths and eyes and ears and hands and feet, and use none of them (Psalm 115:4–7), and Isaiah mocks the man who warms himself with half a log and bows down to the other half (Isaiah 44:9–20). For Moab, whose fortunes were bound up with Chemosh, his captivity is the plainest sign that the LORD is supreme over every other god.

Verse 8 widens the view from named towns to the whole land. “The spoiler” is shâdad, one who ravages, devastates, lays waste and plunders. In English it shares a root with “spoiled” in verse 1 and “spoiling” in verse 3. “No city shall escape” uses mâlaṭ, the same verb as “save your lives” in verse 6. Moab is told to save its life, and then told that no city will get away.

The judgment reaches the countryside too. “The valley”, ʻêmeq, is the fertile lowland, and “the plain”, mîyshôwr, is the level, cultivated tableland. These fed Moab and made it rich. The valley will perish and the plain will be “destroyed”, shâmad, brought to nothing. “Every city” speaks of the whole land, its heights and its lowlands, its towns and its fields.

The verse ends with its foundation: “as the LORD hath spoken.” Yᵉhôvâh is God’s own covenant name, the name of the God of Israel, and he is the one who guarantees the outcome. What happens to Moab is his spoken word coming true, whether it brings warning or blessing. “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void” (Isaiah 55:11).

Verse 9 is bitter irony. “Give wings unto Moab, that it may flee and get away.” The word for wings, tsîyts, comes from a root meaning to gleam, and it can mean a shining plate, a bright flower or, as here, a wing flashing in the air. “Flee” here is nâtsâʼ, to go away or flee, a different word from the “flee” of verse 6. Only wings could carry Moab away fast enough, and it has none.

The reason follows: “for the cities thereof shall be desolate, without any to dwell therein.” “Desolate” is shammâh, from shâmêm, to be stunned or desolate. Shammâh means desolation, and in other places horror. Here it is desolation: cities emptied of people, once the proof of Moab’s strength and wealth.

Verse 10 is the hardest in the passage. “Cursed” is ʼârar, to curse bitterly, a solemn sentence of God’s displeasure. Here it is a declaration of what will fall on anyone who fails in the task God has given. “The work of the LORD” is mᵉlâʼkâh, a task, an occupation or a commission, the work a deputy does for the one who sent him. “Deceitfully” is rᵉmîyâh, remissness, slackness, treachery or deceit. To do the LORD’s work this way is to do it half-heartedly, carelessly or falsely.

In this chapter the work of the LORD is his judgment on Moab, and those who carry it out are the invading armies, most likely Babylon’s. God used pagan nations as his instruments, against other nations and against his own people, and he holds even such instruments to doing all of what he has decreed. The second line makes that plain: “cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.” To keep the sword back is to stop short, to spare what God has sentenced, whether from pity, reluctance or self-interest. The two lines say one thing, and the second explains the first. Elsewhere in the Old Testament God commanded complete destruction of a wicked people, as with Amalek (1 Samuel 15:3), and this verse belongs with those commands.

Moab’s woe is one picture of a woe that hangs over all of us, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Romans 1:18), and every nation and person will one day stand before his throne (Revelation 20:11–15). God now “commandeth all men every where to repent”, because he has appointed a day to judge the world by the man he has ordained (Acts 17:30–31).

Jesus took that woe on himself. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). Moab’s children cried out under judgment, and on the cross Jesus cried out with a loud voice as he bore it (Matthew 27:46). So “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1–2), and those reconciled by his death are saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:8–10). He wept over Jerusalem before its fall (Luke 19:41–44), and he will bring a new creation where God wipes away all tears from his people’s eyes (Revelation 21:1–4). In place of the cries of Horonaim his people sing a new song to the Lamb who redeemed them (Revelation 5:9–10).

Moab trusted in Misgab, its “high fort”, and in its works and treasures, and all of them failed. God himself is the refuge that holds: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). Believers “have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us”, an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast (Hebrews 6:18–19). That hope rests on grace: “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Moab was told to flee and live like a bare bush in the desert, and Christ is the way to the Father (John 14:6) and the giver of living water that springs up into everlasting life (John 4:14), so that the one who trusts him is “like a tree planted by the rivers of water” (Psalm 1:3). He is the true treasure, “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), and the Son who sets captives free (John 8:36).

Chemosh was carried into captivity, helpless. Christ “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7), laid down his life of his own will, and rose to reign over death for ever (Romans 6:9–10). On the cross he “spoiled principalities and powers” and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15), and God has given him the name above every name (Philippians 2:9–11). Moab’s praise ended, and every creature in heaven and earth gives praise to the Lamb for ever (Revelation 5:13). Kingdoms like Moab are spoiled and taken, while God’s kingdom “shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44). It is a kingdom “which cannot be moved” (Hebrews 12:28), and Jesus said it is “not of this world” (John 18:36).

The verse about doing God’s work faithfully finds its one perfect servant in Jesus. “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work,” he said (John 4:34), and at the end, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4). The sword appears again in the New Testament as the word of God, “quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword” (Hebrews 4:12), and as the sharp sword with which the returning Christ judges the nations (Revelation 19:15). “As the LORD hath spoken” is fulfilled in Christ, who is himself the Word (John 1:1), for “all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20).

These verses show a God who rules every nation, who sees through pride and false trust, and whose word comes true town by town and road by road. He judges evil fully, and he grieves over the suffering judgment brings, as his prophet does. Moab’s strongholds, riches and god failed it, and the LORD names each one so that his people see where real security lies. The same chapter that sentences Moab ends with a promise to restore it, and the same God who decreed its fall sent his Son to bear the curse for all who trust him. The cities of Moab were left without any to dwell in them, and in Christ we are given a refuge that stands for ever and a kingdom that will never be moved.