Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 48:2

"The praise of Moab is no more; in Heshbon they have devised evil against her: Come, and let us cut her off from being a nation. Thou also, O Madmen, shalt be brought to silence: the sword shall pursue thee." — Jeremiah 48:2 (ASV)

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.