48:14-47. The destruction of Moab is further prophesied, to awaken them by national repentance and reformation to prevent the trouble, or by a personal repentance and reformation to prepare for it. In reading this long roll of threatenings, and mediating on the terror, it will be of more use to us to keep in view the power of God's anger and the terror of his judgments, and to have our hearts possessed with a holy awe of God and of his wrath, than to search into all the figures and expressions here used. Yet it is not perpetual destruction. The chapter ends with a promise of their return out of captivity in the latter days. Even with Moabites God will not contend for ever, nor be always wroth. The Jews refer it to the days of the Messiah; then the captives of the Gentiles, under the yoke of sin and Satan, shall be brought back by Divine grace, which shall make them free indeed.

Verse 30. - But it shall not be so, etc. This is a case in which the accentuation must most decidedly be deviated from; it implies a faulty view of the word rendered in the Authorized Version, "his lies." But the rendering of our version is neither in itself tenable nor is it that intended by the accentuation. The rendering suggested by the latter is "his praters" (i.e. soothsayers), as the word, no doubt, must be taken in Jeremiah 1:36; Isaiah 44:25. But it is much more natural to render thus: "And the untruth of his pratings [i.e. of his boastings]; the untruth that they have wrought." In his words and in his works (and a word is equal to a work before the Divine Judge) Mesh was essentially "untrue." Truth, in the Biblical sense, is to know and serve the true God.

I know his wrath, saith the Lord,.... Against the Jews, and other nations; what he has threatened to do unto them, and would do if not restrained:

but it shall not be so; as he has devised in his mind, and threatened in his wrath; all his swelling thoughts and big words shall come to nothing:

his lies shall not so effect it; it shall not be according to his words; they will prove lies, and of no effect. Kimchi interprets it of the sons of Moab, who shall not be able to do what they thought to do; and Jarchi of his mighty ones; and the Targum of his nobles, paraphrasing it,

"and their nobles are not right, they do not as is becoming;''

perhaps it may be better understood of his diviners and soothsayers, as the word is used in Isaiah 44:25; and be rendered, "his diviners have not done right" (f); they have deceived him with their lying oracles; swelled him with pride; and brought him to ruin, he trusting to them.

(f) "vaniloqui ejus non rectum fecerunt", Cocceius. So R. Sol. Urbin. Ohel Moed, fol. 38. 1.

30. I know—Moab's "proud arrogancy" (Jer 48:29) or "wrath," against My people, is not unknown to Me.

it shall not be so—The result shall not be so as he thinks: his lies shall not so effect what he aims at by them. Calvin translates, "his lies are not right (that is, his vauntings are vain because God will not give them effect); they shall not do so" as they project in their minds, for God will set at naught their plans.

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