Jeremiah 48:46

Woe be unto thee, O Moab! the people of Chemosh perisheth: for thy sons are taken captives, and thy daughters captives.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

48:14-47. The destruction of Moab is further prophesied, to awaken them by national repentance and reformation to prevent the trouble, or by a personal repentance and reformation to prepare for it. In reading this long roll of threatenings, and mediating on the terror, it will be of more use to us to keep in view the power of God's anger and the terror of his judgments, and to have our hearts possessed with a holy awe of God and of his wrath, than to search into all the figures and expressions here used. Yet it is not perpetual destruction. The chapter ends with a promise of their return out of captivity in the latter days. Even with Moabites God will not contend for ever, nor be always wroth. The Jews refer it to the days of the Messiah; then the captives of the Gentiles, under the yoke of sin and Satan, shall be brought back by Divine grace, which shall make them free indeed.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Because of the force - Rather, without force. Translate it: "The fugitives have stood, (i. e., halted) powerless in the shadow of Heshbon." As Heshbon was the capital of the Ammonites, the sense is that the defeated Moabites looked to Ammon for protection.

But afire ... - Not only will Ammon refuse aid to Moab, but her ruin is to come forth from Heshbon. To show this Jeremiah has recourse to the old triumphal poetry of the Mosaic age (marginal reference).

The corner - i. e., of the beard ..."the crown of the head." The fire of war consumes both far and near, both hair and beard, i. e., everything that it can singe and destroy.

The tumultuous ones - literally, "sons of the battle-shout," the brave Moabite warriors.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

46. Copied from Nu 21:29.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The prophet, closing the threatening part of his prophecy against Moab, repeateth the same thing which he had often said, that the Moabites should be carried into captivity by the king of Babylon, and denounceth a woe unto them upon that account.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Woe be unto thee, O Moab! the people of Chemosh perisheth,.... The inhabitants of Moab, who worshipped the idol Chemosh; of which see Jeremiah 48:7; and so called his people, as Israel were called the people of the Lord; now these, notwithstanding their idol, whom they worshipped, and in whom they trusted, should perish; and sad and deplorable would be their condition and circumstances:

for thy sons are taken captives, and thy daughters captives; this explains the woe that should come upon them, and in what sense they should perish; since their sons and daughters, who they hoped would have continued their name and nation, were taken, and would be carried captives into Babylon; see Numbers 21:29.

Geneva Study Bible

Woe be to thee, O Moab! the people of {b} Chemosh perisheth: for thy sons are taken captives, and thy daughters captives.

(b) Who vaunted themselves of their idol as though he could have defended them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 46. - Based on Numbers 21:29. The chief difference is in the second half of the verse, in which the bold expression of Chemosh "giving his sons and his daughters into captivity" is changed for a mere ordinary and prosaic phrase. Jeremiah 48:46

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Jeremiah 48:46 is again derived from the ancient poem in Numbers 21, but the second half of the verse is altered. The bold figure which represents Chemosh the god of the Moabites as delivering his people up to captivity, is continued in the literal statement of the case; Moab's sons and daughters, i.e., its population, are carried away by the enemy into captivity.