Commentaries
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.
34. From the cry of Heshbon, &c.—Those who fly from Heshbon on its capture shall continue the cry even as far as Elealeh … . There will be continued cries in all quarters, from one end to the other, everywhere slaughter and wasting.
as an heifer of three years old—Moab heretofore not having known foreign yoke, and in its full strength, is compared to an heifer of three years old, never yet yoked, nor as yet worn out with many birth-givings (compare Note, see on [982]Isa 15:5).
waters … of Nimrim—that is, the well-watered and therefore luxuriant pastures of Nimrim.
desolate—The Hebrew is stronger: not merely shall be "desolate," but desolation itself multiplied: plural, "desolations." The most fertile tracts shall be dried up.