2 Kings 3:4

4. Sheepmaster The word is rendered shepherd in Amos 1:1, and, according to some writers, means literally a marker, and serves to designate a shepherd, because it was his custom to mark his sheep in order to distinguish them. Mesha was evidently rich in sheep, and the hills and valleys of Moab, like those of Gilead on the north, (Numbers 32:1,) were well adapted to the pasturage of numerous flocks and herds.

A hundred thousand lambs “Much curious information might easily be presented with respect to ancient, and even modern, tributes in cattle. A curious instance is that of the Cappadocians, of whom Strabo relates that they used to deliver every year, as tribute to the Persians, fifteen hundred horses, two thousand mules, and fifty thousand sheep. This Moabite tribute seems very heavy, and doubtless it was so felt by them while it lasted; but in the same degree was it valuable to the crown of Israel; and the internal taxation, to which resort must have been had to make up for this lapse of external revenue, doubtless made the expedition eventually undertaken for the purpose of reducing the Moabites highly popular in Israel.” Kitto.

A hundred thousand rams, with the wool Literally, A hundred thousand rams’ wool; that is, the wool of a hundred thousand rams. This number of rams would be, as many have remarked, a strange proportion for the number of lambs named; hence we understand with Thenius that the tribute was a hundred thousand fat sheep or lambs, ( כרים ,) and the wool of an equal number of rams, but not the rams themselves. Some understand that the tribute of both lambs and rams was paid in wool.