Verse 9
"And it shall come to pass in that day, Lo, this is our God, we have waited for him, and he will save us, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For in this mountain will the hand of Jehovah rest; and Moab shall be trodden down in his place, even as straw is trodden down in the water of a dunghill. And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst thereof, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim; but Jehovah will lay low his pride together with the craft of his hands. And the high fortress of thy walls hath he brought down, laid low, and brought to the ground, even to the dust."
As Payne noted, this passage is offensive to modern ears, as the very idea of a condemned man having been thrown into a pit dunghill filled with water and fighting to swim out of it is by no means something pleasant to think about; but, on the other hand, God reveals to us in passages of this type just how utterly undesirable the status of wicked people is sure to be when God's judgment comes upon them. Moab, in this passage, seems to have been singled out, not as a single nation awaiting God's punishment, but as "A representative of all the obdurately hostile and unbelieving world whose God-resisting peoples shall be mowed down in the final destruction."[13]
All of the figures that God uses in the Bible to describe the final punishment of the wicked are all repulsive: (1) the lake of fire; (2) the perpetual silence; (3) the outer darkness;, (4) where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth; (5) where the fire is not quenched and the worm dieth not; (6) a pool of blood up to the horses bridles for 200 miles! etc. This description is the seventh;, (7) a man trying to swim out of a watered dung hole! Rather than being offended by such descriptions, men should strive to avoid the place or condition described.
"Where is death's sting? where grave thy victory?
Where all the pain?
Now that thy King the veil that hung o'er thee
Hath rent in twain?"[14]
These precious lines from a hymn are an appropriate way to close our study of this tremendous chapter.
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