2 Kings 3:21-25 - Homiletics

God's enemies rewarded after their deserving.

Whether or no the Moabites were, humanly speaking, justified in their attempt to shake off the Israelitish yoke, and re-establish their independence, at any rate they were, as a nation, distinctly hostile to Jehovah and his laws, and must be counted as among God's enemies. Their Chemosh cannot be reckoned as an adumbration of the true God; he is rather an adumbration of the evil and malignant spirit. A people that delights in human sacrifice, and offers to its deities tender and innocent children, drowning their cries with the loud din of drums and tom-toms, must have depraved its conscience by long persistence in evil, and departed very far indeed from original righteousness. Moab, moreover, had, from the time of Balak, determinately set itself at once to oppose the Israelites, whenever opportunity offered, by armed force, and also to corrupt and deprave them morally and religiously. The Moabites had recently made what seems to have been an entirely unprovoked attack upon Jehoshaphat, and had stirred up the Ammonites and Edomites to do the same ( 2 Chronicles 20:1-15 ). They had already suffered one chastisement for this wrong-doing, at the hand of God ( 2 Chronicles 20:22-24 ); but God's anger against them was not yet fully appeased. The rebellion on which Mesha had adventured led now to a further chastisement—Moab was ravaged from one end of the country to the other, the towns were taken and demolished, the fruit trees cut down, the good land "marred," only Kir-haraseth was left unharmed; and even there the inhabitants suffered greatly. Moab was severely punished; but, as usually, God's justice was tempered with mercy. She was not crushed; she was not destroyed. If we may believe Mesha, she gradually recovered and rebuilt her towns. After fifty years of depression she was able to resume her raids into the land of Israel ( 2 Kings 13:20 ), and it was not till the establishment of the Roman supremacy over the East that, having filled up the measure of her iniquities, she ceased to exist as a nation.