Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 48

Against Moab thus says the Lord of hosts ... —Better, with a different punctuation, Concerning Moab (this being the title of the section), Thus says the Lord of hosts. In the long prophecy that follows, Jeremiah in part follows in the wake of “the burden of Moab” in Isaiah 15 and 16, entering even more fully into geographical details. (See Notes there.)

The relations between Moab and Israel had for a long period been more or less uneasy. The former had been tributary to the latter under Ahab, but on his death Mesha revolted, and a war ensued, which ended in the defeat of the Moabites by the allied forces of Israel, Judah, and Edom (2 Kings 3:0). They repeated their attack, however (2 Kings 13:20), and appear to have occupied the territory of the Transjordanic tribes on their deportation by Tiglath-pileser.

Of the three places named, Nebo, memorable as the summit of Pisgah, from which Moses looked upon the land of promise, and forming part of the range of the mountains of Abarim (Deuteronomy 32:49; Deuteronomy 34:1), has been identified conjecturally with Djebel-el-Attarus, or Djebel-el-Jel’ad. Hitzig derives the name from the Sanskrit Nabho (= the cloud-heaven). Kiriathaim (= the double city) is named in Genesis 14:5 and Numbers 32:37, in the latter passage in conjunction with Elealeh, Heshbon, and Nebo.

Jerome places it at a distance of ten miles west of Medaba, as one of the cities rebuilt by the Reubenites, but it has not been identified. Misgab, the “high fort” or “citadel” of Isaiah 25:12, has shared the same fate, but has been referred by some writers to Kir-Moab, or Kir-heres, as the chief fortified city of the country (Jeremiah 48:36; Isaiah 15:1; Isaiah 16:7). The article which is prefixed to it in the Hebrew has led Fürst (Lexicon) to take it in a wider sense, as meaning the plateau or highland country of Moab generally.

There shall be no more praise of Moab. The self-glorifying boasts of Moab (of which the Moabite Inscription discovered at Dibân in 1868 is a conspicuous instance, see Ginsburg’s Moabite Stone and Records of the Past, xi, p. 163) seem to have been almost proverbial (Jeremiah 48:29; Isaiah 16:6). Heshbon (the city is perhaps chosen on account of the similarity of sound with the word for “devise”) was on the Ammonite or northern frontier of Moab (Jeremiah 49:3) and is represented, therefore, as the scene of the plans and hopes of the invading Chaldeans. The site of Madmen is unknown, but the cognate form Madmenah is translated “dunghill” in Isaiah 25:10, and may have been chosen by each prophet on account of its ignominious meaning.

The name appears as belonging to a town in Benjamin (Isaiah 10:31) and in Judah (Joshua 15:31). Here again there is an obvious assonance or paronomasia, the verb “you shall be cut down,” or better, you shall be brought to silence, reproducing the chief consonants of the noun. The Septuagint, Vulgate, and Syriac, indeed, take the words with this meaning, “In silence you shall be made silent,” but are probably wrong in doing so. If we take the word in somewhat of the same sense as in Isaiah, the words may point to the place being filled with the mouldering carcasses of the silent dead.

Horonaim —literally, the two caverns, or the two Horons—may imply, like other dual names of towns, that there was an upper and a lower city. It is mentioned in Isaiah 15:5, but has not been identified.

Her little ones. —The Hebrew adjective is the same as the Zoar, the little one, of Genesis 19:20, and that city may probably have been, as in Isaiah 15:5, in the prophet’s mind. In any case the “little ones” are cities, and not children.

In the going up of Luhith. —Here again we have an echo from Isaiah 15:5. Jerome (Onomast. s.v. Luith) describes it as between Zoar and Areopolis (= Rabbath-Moab). The ascent was probably to a local sanctuary. A various reading, Laboth, followed by the Septuagint, gives the meaning “the ascent of planks,” as though it were a wooden staircase. In both that ascent and in the descent from Horonaim (possibly the fugitives who came down from the heights of the one city are represented as going up with wailing to the other) the enemies of Moab would hear the cry that proclaimed its downfall.