Jer 48:16-25 | KD | STEP | Moab’s glory is departed. - Jer 48:16. "The destruction of Moab is near to come, and his trouble hastens rapidly. Jer 48:17. Bewail him, all [ye who are] round about him, and all who know his name! Say, How the rod of strength is broken, the staff of majesty! Jer 48:18. Come down from [thy] glory, and sit in the drought, [thou] inhabitants, daughter of Dibon; for the destroyer of Moab hath come up against thee, he hath destroyed thy strongholds. Jer 48:19. Stand by the way, and watch, O inhabitants of Aroer! ask him who flees, and her that has escaped; say, What has happened? Jer 48:20. Moab is ashamed, for it is broken down: howl and cry out; tell it in Arnon, that Moab is laid waste. Jer 48:21. And judgment hath come upon the country of the plain, upon Holon, and upon Jahzah, and upon Mephaath, Jer 48:22. And upon Dibon, and upon Nebo, and upon Beth-diblathaim, Jer 48:23. And upon Kirjathaim, and upon Beth-gamul, and upon Beth-meon, Jer 48:24. And upon Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and upon all the cities of the land of Moab, those that are far off and those that are near. Jer 48:25. The horn of Moab is cut off, ad his arm is broken, saith Jahveh." The downfall of Moab will soon begin. is an imitation of ; cf. ; Isa 56:1. The fall of the Moabite power and glory will be so terrible, that all the nations, near ad distant, will have pity on him. The summons to lament, , is not a mockery, but is seriously meant, for the purpose of expressing the idea that the downfall of so mighty and glorious a power will rouse compassion. The environs of Moab are the neighbouring nations, and "those who know his name" are those who live far off, and have only heard about him. The staff, the sceptre, is the emblem of authority; cf. , , and Psa 110:2.

‏ Jeremiah 48:16-25

Jer 48:16-17 Moab’s glory is departed. - Jer 48:16. "The destruction of Moab is near to come, and his trouble hastens rapidly. Jer 48:17. Bewail him, all [ye who are] round about him, and all who know his name! Say, How the rod of strength is broken, the staff of majesty! Jer 48:18. Come down from [thy] glory, and sit in the drought, [thou] inhabitants, daughter of Dibon; for the destroyer of Moab hath come up against thee, he hath destroyed thy strongholds. Jer 48:19. Stand by the way, and watch, O inhabitants of Aroer! ask him who flees, and her that has escaped; say, What has happened? Jer 48:20. Moab is ashamed, for it is broken down: howl and cry out; tell it in Arnon, that Moab is laid waste. Jer 48:21. And judgment hath come upon the country of the plain, upon Holon, and upon Jahzah, and upon Mephaath, Jer 48:22. And upon Dibon, and upon Nebo, and upon Beth-diblathaim, Jer 48:23. And upon Kirjathaim, and upon Beth-gamul, and upon Beth-meon, Jer 48:24. And upon Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and upon all the cities of the land of Moab, those that are far off and those that are near. Jer 48:25. The horn of Moab is cut off, ad his arm is broken, saith Jahveh."

The downfall of Moab will soon begin. Jer 48:16 is an imitation of Deu 32:35; cf. Isa 13:22; Isa 56:1. The fall of the Moabite power and glory will be so terrible, that all the nations, near ad distant, will have pity on him. The summons to lament, Jer 48:17, is not a mockery, but is seriously meant, for the purpose of expressing the idea that the downfall of so mighty and glorious a power will rouse compassion. The environs of Moab are the neighbouring nations, and "those who know his name" are those who live far off, and have only heard about him. The staff, the sceptre, is the emblem of authority; cf. Eze 19:11-12, Eze 19:14, and Psa 110:2. Jer 48:18-20

In Jer 48:18-25 is further described the downfall of this strong and glorious power. The inhabitants if Dibon are to come down from their glory and sit in misery; those of Aroer are to ask the fugitives what has happened, that they may learn that the whole table-land on to the Arnon has been taken by the enemy; and they are to howl over the calamity. The idea presented in Jer 48:18 is an imitation of that in Isa 47:1, "Come down, O daughter of Babylon, sit in the dust;" but רדי is intensified by the addition of מכּבוד, and וּשׁבי על is changed into וּשׁבי בצּמא (the Kethib ישׁבי has evidently been written by mistake for וּשׁבי, the Qeri). צמא elsewhere means "thirst;" but "sit down in the thirst" would be too strange an expression; hence צמא must here have the meaning of צמא, Isa 44:3, "the thirsty arid land:" thus it remains a question whether we should point the word צמא, or take צמא as another form of צמא, as חלב sa ,צîא fo mro is of חלב, Eze 23:19. There is no sufficient reason why Hitzig and Ewald should give the word a meaning foreign to it, from the Arabic or Syriac. Dibon lay about four miles north from the Arnon, at the foot of a mountain, in a very beautiful plain, where, under the name of Dibân, many traces of walls, and a well by the wayside, hewn out of the rock, are still to be found (Seetzen, i. S. 409f.). Hence it must have been well provided with water, even though we should be obliged to understand by "the water of Dimon" (Dibon), which Isaiah mentions (Isa 15:9), the river Arnon, which is about three miles off. The command to "sit down in an arid land" thus forms a suitable figure, representing the humiliation and devastation of Dibon. That the city was fortified, is evident from the mention of the fortifications in the last clause. ישׁבת , as in Jer 46:19. Aroer was situated on the north bank of the Arnon (Mojeb), where its ruins still remain, under the old name Arâ'ir (Burckhardt, p. 372). It was a frontier town, between the kingdom of Sihon (afterwards the territory of the Israelites) and the possession of the Moabites (Deu 2:36; Deu 3:12; Deu 4:48; Jos 12:2; Jos 13:9, Jos 13:16). But after the Moabites had regained the northern portion of their original territory, it lay in the midst of the land. The fugitives here represented as passing by are endeavouring, by crossing the Arnon, to escape from the enemy advancing from the north, and subduing the country before them. נס ונמלטה means fugitives of every kind. The co-ordination of the same word or synonymous terms in the masc. and fem. serves to generalize the idea; see on Isa 3:1, and Ewald, §172, c. In נמלטה the tone is retracted through the influence of the distinctive accent; the form is participial. The question, "What has happened?" is answered in Jer 48:20. כּי חתּה, "for (= certainly) it is broken down." The Kethib הלילי וּזעקי must not be changed. Moab is addressed: with הגּידוּ is introduced the summons, addressed to individuals, to proclaim at the Arnon the calamity that has befallen the country to the north of that river. Jer 48:21-25

In Jer 48:21-24 the general idea of Moab’s being laid waste is specialized by the enumeration of a long list of towns on which judgment has come. They are towns of ארץ המּישׁור, the table-land to the north of the Arnon, the names of which early all occur in the Pentateuch and Joshua as towns in the tribe of Reuben. But Holon is mentioned only here. According to Eusebius, in the Onomasticon, s.v. ̓Ιεσσά, Jahzah was situated between Μηδαβῶν (Medeba) and Δηβοῦς (Dibon); according to Jerome, between Medeba and Debus, or Deblathai; but from Num 21:23, we conclude that it lay in an easterly direction, on the border of the desert, near the commencement of the Wady Wale. Mophaath or Mephaath, where, according to the Onomasticon, a Roman garrison was placed, on account of the near proximity of the desert, is to be sought for in the neighbourhood of Jahzah; see on Jos 13:18. As to Dibon, see on Jer 48:18; for Nebo, see on Jer 48:1. Beth-diblathaim is mentioned only in this passage. It is probably identical with Almon-diblathaim, Num 33:46, and to be sought for somewhere north from Dibon. For Kirjahthaim see Jer 48:1. Beth-gamul is nowhere else mentioned; its site, too, is unknown. Eli Smith, in Robinson’s Palestine, iii. App. p. 153, is inclined to recognise it in the ruins of Um-el-Jemel, lying on the southern boundary of the Hauran, about twenty miles south-west from Bozrah; but a consideration of the position shows that they cannot be the same. Beth-meon, or Baal-meon (Num 32:38), or more fully, Beth-baal-meon (Jos 13:17), lay about three miles south from Heshbon, where Burckhardt (p. 365) found some ruins called Mi-ûn (Robinson, iii. App. p. 170, Ma-în); see on Num 32:38. Kerioth, Jer 48:24 and Jer 48:41, and Amo 2:2, is not to be identified with the ruins called Kereyath or Küreiyath, mentioned by Burckhardt (p. 367) and Seetzen (Reisen, ii. 342, iv. 384), as Ritter has assumed; for this Kereyath is more probably Kirjathaim (see on Jer 48:1). Rather, as is pretty fully proved by Dietrich (in Merx' Archiv. i. 320ff.), it is a synonym of Ar, the old capital of Moab, Num 22:36; and the plural form is to be accounted for by supposing that Ar was made up of two or several large portions. We find two great arguments supporting this position: (1.) When Ar, the capital, occurs among the names of the towns of Moab, as in the list of those in Reuben, Jos 13:16-21, and in the prophecy against Moab in Isaiah, Jer 15 and 16, where so many Moabitic towns are named, we find no mention of Kerioth; and on the other hand, where Kerioth is named as an important town in Moab, Amo 2:2; Jer 48:1, there is no mention of Ar. (2.) Kerioth is mentioned as an important place in the country in Amo 2:2, where, from the whole arrangement of the prophecy, it can only be the capital of Moab; in this present chapter also, Jer 48:24, Kerioth and Bozrah are introduced as two very important towns which maintained the strength of Moab; and immediately afterwards it is added, "The horn of Moab is cut off," etc. Further, in Jer 48:41 the capture of Kerioth is put on a level with the taking of the fortresses; while it is added, that the courage of the mighty men has failed, just as in Jer 49:22 the capture of Bozrah is coupled with the loss of courage on the part of Edom’s heroes. Bozrah is not to be confounded with Bozrah in Edom (Jer 49:13), nor with the later flourishing city of Bostra in Hauran: it is the same with Bezer (בּצר), which, according to Deu 4:43 and Jos 20:8, was situated in the Mishor of the tribe of Reuben, but has not yet been discovered; see on Deu 4:43. For the purpose of completing the enumeration, it is further added, "all the towns of the land of Moab, those which are far off (i.e., those which are situated towards the frontier) and those which are near" (i.e., the towns of the interior, as Kimchi has already explained). Thereby the horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm broken. Horn and arm are figures of power: the horn an emblem of power that boldly asserts itself, and pushes down all that opposes (cf. Psa 75:5, 11); the arm being rather an emblem of dominion.