Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 2:1

"Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Moab, yea, for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime:" — Amos 2:1 (ASV)

Moab - The relation of Moab to Israel is only accidentally different from that of Ammon. One spirit motivated both, expressing itself in one and the same way as opportunity arose, and mostly together (see the note at Amos 1:13).

Besides those more formal invasions, the history of Elisha mentions one, probably of many, inroads of bands of the Moabites. It seems as if, when the year entered in, and with it the harvest, the bands of the Moabites entered in too, like the Midianites and Amalekites and the children of the east (Judges 6:3–4, Judges 6:11) in the time of Gideon, or their successors the Bedouins, now.

This their continual hostility is related in the few words of a parenthesis. There was no occasion to relate at length a uniform hostility, which was as regular as the seasons of the year, and the year’s produce, and the temptation to the greed of Moab, when Israel was weakened by Hazael.

Because he burned the bones of the king of Edom - The deed here condemned is unknown. Doubtless it was connected with that same hatred of Edom, which the king of Moab showed when besieged by Israel. People are often more enraged against a friend or ally who has made terms with one whom they hate or fear, than with the enemy himself. Certainly, when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him (2 Kings 3:26–27), his fury was directed personally against the king of Edom. He took with him 700 chosen men to cut through to the king of Edom, and they could not. Escape was not their object.

They sought not to cut through the Edomite contingent into the desert, but to the king of Edom. Then he took his oldest son, that is, probably the oldest son of the king of Edom whom he captured, and offered him up as a burnt offering on the wall.

Such is the simplest structure of the words: He strove to cut through to the king of Edom, and they could not, and he took his oldest son, etc., and there was great indignation against Israel. That indignation too on the part of Edom (for there was no other to be indignant against Israel) is best accounted for, if this expedition, undertaken because Moab had rebelled against Israel, had occasioned the sacrifice of the son of the king of Edom, who took part in it only as a tributary of Judah.

Edom would have had no special occasion to be indignant with Israel, if on occasion of an ordinary siege, the king of Moab had, in a shocking way, performed the national idolatry of child-sacrifice. That hatred the king of Moab carried beyond the grave—hatred which the pagan too held to be unnatural in its implacability and insatiability.

The soul being, after death, beyond man’s reach, the hatred, expressed upon his remains, is a sort of impotent grasping at eternal vengeance.

It inflicts on what it knows to be unfeeling the hatred with which it would pursue, if it could, the living being who is beyond it. Its impotence demonstrates its fierceness, since, having no power to inflict any real revenge, it has no object but to show its hatred. Hatred, which death cannot extinguish, is the beginning of the eternal hate in hell. With this hatred Moab hated the king of Edom, seemingly because he had been, though probably against his will, on the side of the people of God.

It was then sin against the love of God, and directed against God Himself. The single instance, which we know, of any feud between Moab and Edom was when Edom was engaged in a constrained service of God. At least there are no indications of any conquest of each other. The Bozrah of Moab, being in the Mishor, the plain (Jeremiah 48:21, Jeremiah 48:24), is certainly distinct from the Bozrah of Edom, which Jeremiah speaks of at the same time as belonging to Edom (Jeremiah 49:13). Each kingdom, Edom and Moab, had its own strong city, Bozrah, at one and the same time.

And if the rock, which Isaiah speaks of as the stronghold of Moab (Isaiah 16:1), was indeed the Petra of Edom (and the mere name, in that country of rock-fortresses, is not strong proof, yet is the only proof), they won it from Judah who had taken it from Edom, and in whose hands it remained in the time of Amos (2 Kings 14:7; see above the note at Amos 1:12), not from Edom itself.

Or, again, the tribute may have been only sent through Petra, as the great center of commerce. Edom’s half-service gained it no good, but evil; Moab’s malice was its destruction.

The proverb, speak good only of the dead, shows what reverence human nature dictates: not to condemn those who have gone before their Judge, unless He has already openly condemned them. Death, says Athanasius in relating the death of Arius on his perjury, is the common end of all people, and we ought not to insult the dead, though he be an enemy, for it is uncertain whether the same event may not happen to ourselves before evening.