2 Kings 3:21

THE DEFEAT OF THE MOABITES BY THE COALITION

"Now when the Moabites heard that the kings were come up to fight against them, they gathered themselves together, all that were able to put on armor, and upward, and stood on the border. And they rose up early in the morning, and the sun shone upon the water, and the Moabites saw the water over against them as red as blood: and they said, This is blood; the kings are surely destroyed, and they have smitten each man his fellow: now therefore, Moab, to the spoil. And when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and smote the Moabites, so that they fled before them; and they went forward into the land, smiting the Moabites. And they beat down their cities; and on every good piece of land they cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the fountains of water, and felled all the good trees, until in Kir-hareseth only they left the stones thereof howbeit the slingers went about it, and smote it."

This paragraph states merely that the victory over Moab was granted, even as the prophet had said and that the Israelites ruthlessly carried out their ancient equivalent of the "scorched earth" invasion. However, it was not in the will of God that Moab should again become tributary to Israel; and accordingly, there came an abrupt end of this destructive campaign, leaving Moab independent of Israel.