Ezekiel 25:8-11

‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh, “Because Moab and Seir say, ‘Behold the house of Judah is like all nations’, therefore behold I will open the side of Moab from the cities, from his cities which are on his frontiers, the glory of the country, Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon, and Kiriathaim, to the children of the East, along with the children of Ammon, and I will give them for a possession, that the children of Ammon may not be remembered among the nations. And I will execute judgments on Moab, and they will know that I am Yahweh.” ’

Moab is here connected with Edom (Seir) as saying that ‘the house of Judah is just like other nations’, and thus that her God is the same. Together they reject the idea that Judah are the favoured of Yahweh Who is all-powerful. They deride Judah from afar.

Thus Moab will share the fate of Ammon with whom she was in continual alliance. Her countryside will be opened up to the children of the East by the destruction of her main fortresses, that were the source of her strength. It will be opened up ‘from the cities, that is the frontier cities’. Its most glorious areas, her pride and joy, will be opened up, Beth-jeshimoth (‘house of the deserts’), a place near the north-east shore of the Dead Sea in the Jordan rift valley, Baal-meon, built by the Reubenites (Numbers 32:38) and captured and held by the Moabites when they became strong, and Kiriathaim, declared by Mesha in his 9th century inscription to have been rebuilt by him when he captured it from Israel.

Note the stress again on the fact that Ammon’s days were numbered. Moab will suffer alongside her as being so closely connected with her that she can be seen as one with her, and indeed she would suffer the same fate, disappearing from history. Thus she too learned too late Who and What Yahweh was. And in her disappearance Yahweh, the everlasting One, was vindicated.