2 Kings 3:23
Ver. 23. And they said, this is blood,.... They were very confident of it, having no notion of water, there having been no rain for some time; and perhaps it was not usual to see water at any time in this place:the kings are surely slain; they and their forces:and they have smitten one another; having quarrelled either about their religion, or about want of water, and the distress they were come into through it, laying the blame of their coming out to war, or of their coming that way, on one another; and the Moabites might rather think something of this kind had happened, from what had lately been done among themselves, and their allies, 2Ch 20:23now therefore, Moab, to the spoil; having no occasion to fight, or prepare for it; all they had to do was to march directly to the enemy's camp, and plunder it. 2 Kings 3:24Ver. 24. And when they came to the camp of Israel,.... Not in an orderly regular manner, in rank and file, as an army should march, but in a confused manner, everyone striving who should get thither first, and have the largest share of the booty:the Israelites rose up and smote the Moabites, so that they fled before them; being prepared for them, they fell upon them sword in hand, and soon obliged them to flee:but they went forward smiting the Moabites, even in their country; they pursued them closely, and slew them as they fled, and followed them not only to their borders, but into their own country: though Schultens {m}, from the use of the word hbn in the Arabic language, renders the passage, "and they blunted their swords in it (in that slaughter), even by smiting the Moabites".{m} De Defect. Hod. Ling. Heb. sect. 26. 2 Kings 3:25Ver. 25. And they beat down the cities,.... Demolished the walls of them, and houses in them, wherever they came:and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled it; which they had taken out of the walls and houses they pulled down; or which they picked up in the highway, as they passed along, being a stony country; or which being laid in heaps, gathered out of the fields, they took and scattered them all over them:and they stopped all the wells of water; with stones and dirt:and felled all the good trees; fruit bearing ones;See Gill on "2Ki 3:19",only in Kirharaseth left they the stones thereof; not able to demolish it, it being a strong fortified city, the principal of the kingdom, and into which the king of Moab had thrown himself, and the remains of his forces; of which see Isa 16:7,howbeit, the slingers went about it, and smote it; smote the soldiers that appeared upon the walls of it; though Kimchi, and other Jewish writers, understand it of engineers, who cast out large stones from a sort of machines then in use, to batter down and break through the walls of cities. 2 Kings 3:26Ver. 26. And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him,.... The siege was so close, the slingers or engineers did so much execution, that he saw the city would soon be taken, and he be obliged to deliver it up:he took with him seven hundred men that drew swords; men expert in war, bold and daring:to break through even unto the king of Edom; through his quarters, and so escape, he lying nearest to the city, and perhaps the weakest body of men with him; or he might think he was not so hearty in the cause of the kings, and would make but a feeble resistance, and let him pass:but they could not; break through they met with a greater opposition than was expected perhaps the Edomites remembered how they had lately used them, which made them fight more desperately against them, see2Ch 20:23. 2 Kings 3:27Ver. 27. Then he took his eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead,.... Not the eldest son of the king of Edom, whom the king of Moab had in his hands before, which made the king of Edom the more willing to join in this expedition for the recovery of his son, as Joseph Kimchi thinks; or whom he took now in his sally out upon him, as Moses Kimchi and Ben Gersom, proceeding upon a mistaken sense of Am 2:1 for the king of Edom could have no son that had a right, or was designed to succeed him, since he was but a deputy king himself; and besides, the sacrificing of him was not the way to cause the kings to raise the siege, but rather to provoke them to press it the more closely: it was the king of Moab that took his son and heir to the crown,and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall; that it might be seen by the camp of Israel, and move their compassion; or rather this was done as a religious action, to appease the deity by an human sacrifice so dear and precious, to give success, and cause the enemy to break up the siege; and was either offered to the true God, the God of Israel, in imitation of Abraham, as some Jewish writers fancy {n}, or to his idol Chemosh, the sun; and Jarchi observes, out of an exposition of theirs, that "vau" is wanting in the word for wall, and so may be interpreted of the sun, towards which this burnt offering was offered; and it is observed, from various Heathen authors, that it was usual with the Heathens, when in calamity and distress, to offer up to their gods what was most dear and valuable to them; and particularly the Phoenicians {o}, and from them the Carthaginians had this custom, who at one time offered up two hundred sons of their nobility, to appease their gods {p}:and there was great indignation against Israel; not of the king of Edom against them, for not rescuing his son, or because they were the means of this disaster which befell him; but of the king of Moab, who was quite desperate, and determined to hold out the siege to the utmost extremity: and they departed, and returned to their own land; the three kings, the one to Edom, the other to Israel, and the third to Judah; when they saw the Moabites would sell their lives so dear, and hold out to the last man, they thought fit to break up the siege; and perhaps were greatly affected with the barbarous shocking sight they had seen, and might fear, should they stay, something else of the like kind would be done.{n} T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 39. 2. Pesikta in Abarbinel in loc. {o} Vid. Euseb. Evangel. Praepar. l. 1. c. 10. p. 40. l. 4. c. 16. p. 156. Porphyr. de Abstinentia, l. 2. sect. 56. Vid. Aelian. Var. Hist. l. 12. c. 28. {p} Diodor. Sicul. Bibliothec. l. 20. p. 756.
John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible.