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.

36. (See on [983]Isa 15:7; [984]Isa 16:11).

like pipes—a plaintive instrument, therefore used at funerals and in general mourning.

riches … gotten—literally, the abundance … that which is over and above the necessaries of life. Grotius translates, "They who have been left remaining shall perish"; they who have not been slain by the enemy shall perish by disease and famine.