Truth and Consequences:
A study in the prophecy of Jeremiah
Chapter 48
By Bob Mendelsohn
Given 18 November 2022
Lesson Forty-seven: Moab
INTRODUCTION
Good fences make good neighbours, they say. I’m in Nashville today, which is my fourth city in this US tour that saw me speak with you from St Louis and Kansas City the last couple of Bible lessons. I’ll be here through US Thanksgiving next week, then make it home to Sydney in time for the beginning of December. And here in Tennessee, and back in Missouri and Kansas, good neighbours really matter. Houses in suburbs abut one another and driveways are often even shared between houses. You must have good relationships with those immediately next door or else your life will ever be less than, not as it should be.
I remember a time in the 1970s in Lawrence, Kansas, home of the University of Kansas, when our neighbours felt threatened by our religious commune and expressed that threat to us. Someone had vandalized their motorcycle and they were sure it was someone in our community of faith. That kind of assumption and mistrust led to continued difficulties.
Similarly, my parents had a home in Kansas City and it had an in-ground swimming pool, that is, until their immediate neighbour went to the local council and found a variance in their property line of 6 inches, that’s 15 centimetres. As a result, he sued my parents, causing the pool which was now over onto his property line, to require being filled in with dirt and everyone lost.
I say everyone, because the neighbourhood became a hood in that one moment. No neighbour would do that to another. The sense of loss was much more than the swimming pool; it was a loss of the social fabric that should define the juxtaposition of people.
When I read this chapter, chapter 48 of Jeremiah, I felt the loss of neighbours, and that the influence Judah was to have had on her neighbours was one for the ages.
The Jewish people have been called to be God’s people, ever since Abram became Abraham and was told that he would be a blessing to the nations around him. (Genesis 12) In other words, we were called to know the Lord AND to represent him well to the peoples of the world. Who would those peoples be? Abram would not have imagined the British or the French. He didn’t see in his mind’s eye the Kiwis or the Pakistanis. He imagined those nations near him, that is, the Canaanites and the Perizites, the Hittites and the Hivites.
Abraham’s mission was to know the Lord and continue being a friend of God. (James 2.23) Then when Lot, his nephew, went off and chose another place to live, had a drunken night with his own daughters, had sex with them, he produced his own sons/grandsons, they were named Ammon and Moab. (Genesis 19.37-38)
Our chapter today focuses on the Moabites and Moab, the region itself.
That’s where we start in verse 1. Immediately God himself is listed as the spokesman. We need that. This is not Baruch writing his own thought. This is not Jeremiah wishing that the people of Moab would behave differently. This is God speaking to Jeremiah, as we saw at the beginning of chapter 46, to the nations, and one by one, Jeremiah takes them on.
This mention of Moab, the younger son of Lot, strikes me as painful and as Wright says, “the most poignant of all these oracles.” (page 422) Last week I went to visit my longest friend, from elementary school, junior and senior high school, and found him in an assisted care facility in the Kansas City Country Club Plaza. We caught up as we usually do when I’m in town, running lists of folks whom we had seen or not seen, then we got down to real stuff. Religion, he told me, may not be so far away from his need just now. He’s been an agnostic for many years, but now, he’s rethinking that decision. I went to the shops and bought him a Bible. They embossed his name on the front. He has it now and hopefully he’s begun reading it. I gave him citations to read and consider.
I tell you the story of my friend also named Bob so you can feel the feelings I have about my longest friend. Why? Judah and Moab are next-door neighbours. They are separated only by the Jordan River. And at times, that’s a thin creek. Their relationship should have been a good one, but unfortunately they took on board the idolatry of the nations and resisted their cousins in Judah and the religion of their ancestor Abraham.
Jeremiah lists several cities, I think more than 20 of them, and carries on with woes and declarations of judgment upon them. First is Nebo, then Kiriathaim—both already ruined. Using the term “Chovisha” (put to shame). It’s the hang-my-head embarrassment for having lost to an enemy. Like the Sydney Swans vs Geelong Cats in this year’s Grand Final at the MCG. Not only a loss; but a shame.
Note the word in verse 1, (Misgav), meaning lofty. That can be both a title of its significance like the “Mighty Russian army” or a note of why it fell, as in ‘pride goes before a fall.’ (Prov. 16.18)
And that latter picture makes sense in light of verse 2, “Praise for Moab no longer.” It was a decent sized area with significance in the region, and yet, it falls to Babylon. Another town is listed, Cheshbon, which is a major town in that region. It used to belong to Reuben (Josh 13.17) or Gad (Josh 13.26), and involves a play-on-words. Chashav means to ‘think or devise.” So the play in verse 2 is that there, they devise. In the place of devising, they devise.
Verse 2, we read Madman, and that’s another town name. And it’s likely this is another play on words. (MadMain) vs (MadMaina). This location, only used once in the Tenach, and probably is the place of this silencing, meaning they will not raise their voice, they are vanquished. In Isaiah 25.10 we read this, “For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain, and Moab will be trodden down in his place as straw is trodden down in the water of a manure pile.”
The word for ‘manure pile’ or ‘dung pit’ is Madmaina. That could be with what imagery Jeremiah is seeking to connect us here in Moab and in verse 2. Even the root word “DAMAM” from “TIDMI” means here to ‘be silent.’ Whatever root Jeremiah uses, it’s clear that this village is under the rule of another, they must be silent, and they are not living in luxury any longer.
Everywhere Jeremiah is listing has already bitten the dust. Vanquished. Ruined.
Those villages and cities are all up north. Beginning in verse 3, Jeremiah shifts to Southern Moab. And Shever meaning destruction is sounded time and time again. (.3,.4,.5)
Then in verse 6 we read the call to ‘flee’ and save themselves, even though there is really nowhere to hide. In verse 7, we see the cause of their troubles.
For because of your trust in your own achievements and treasures, even you yourself will be captured; and Chemosh will go off into exile together with his priests and his princes.”
The cause of God’s judgment in sending Nebuchadnezzar against Moab is their faith in themselves, their trust in their deity named Chemosh, and pride will always have an outcome. One that you don’t have assigned to you.
This ‘pride’ is not the same as ‘dignity.’ It’s a proud that says, “I’m better than you.” Or as Isaiah declared of the judged ones in his day, “Who say, ‘Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am holier than you!’ These are smoke in My nostrils, a fire that burns all the day.” (Isa. 65.5)
Now don’t miss verse 13. In the same way that Moab trusted Chemosh, Judah trusted Bethel. Remember chapter 7? The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. Neighbours needs to share truth with one another and here Judah was to have not only built and maintained the sanctuary for God, but they were to have invited the neighbours in, they were to tell those next-door about the wonders and glory of God. Instead, the Jewish people of Jeremiah’s day and of Zedekiah’s day and of Jehoiakim’s day were ruined and trusted in themselves. What a waste!
So the cause is clear, and both Judah for not sharing truth and Moab for not believing in the true God are now being judged for this error.
Trouble is brewing and we read that in verse 8 and following as well. Look at verse 14. This is God’s declaration of trouble. The trouble is what some would label a lament. Last Sunday at the church across the street from our home here the pastor began a three-part series on Habakkuk, and discussed at length the feelings involved in a lament. Habakkuk, as you may know, was a contemporary of Jeremiah. I’ve been studying his prophecy for a month or so, to get another prophet’s angle on this same time period. And the word ‘lament’ makes great sense. Disaster, shame, empty… these are words of a lament, and Jeremiah who will later write the book of Lamentations is all too familiar with both the feelings and the language of lament.
And when you think about what lessons you will want to share next month, when we bring this book to a close, when you think about your own reflections about Jeremiah and what you have learned, maybe you will write about lamentation itself and how your own sadness has great purpose in God. Jeremiah did not shrink back from experiencing this feeling. Both Jeremiah and Habakkuk and many others felt the feelings and then expressed them—for US as well as for themselves.
Verse 10, God says that the one who does not accomplish his judgment should be cursed. If the Babylonians do not wipe out Judah, then God will judge them. (No matter what happens, Babylon will be copping serious judgment) That’s a fascinating use of people who are being judged and will be judged.
Verse 16. The disaster will come soon. Mourn for him, all who know his name. Mighty splendour…all gone. In other words, the people in the neighbourhood saw the glory of Moab. And they said, “How can this be?” I suppose those who watched bitcoin/ crypto currency as it plummeted this week wondered the same. Or in 2008 when the Global Financial Crisis caused massive layoffs and Wall Street bankers plummeting to their own death as they leapt off balconies. Why did they do that?
All their hope, all their glory was gone.
Verse 18, ‘come down from your glory.’ He has ruined your stronghold.
Verse 20. Moab has been shattered. Ruined. There is no way out. No escape. The ruin is comprehensive.
Verse 33. No gladness. No joy. All gone. Do you feel this? Do you sense the ending is sure? The wine is gone, the winepress is closed. The factories are showing their endings. The neighbourhood is without hope.
Verse 36. I join the lament for Moab. Aching.
Verse 39. Moab has turned his back. That’s the essence of God rejection. Pride in himself, assurance that his own way is enough leads a man, leads a people to turn his back on the Almighty. Shame is the result.
Verse 42. Arrogance is shown as the cause. Remember, pride results in the fall. No hope. This is sadness on steroids.
Verse 45. In the shadow of Cheshbon. Woe to you, Moab. Men and women, all children. No hope in family. No hope in agriculture. No hope in civic accomplishment. The fortified cities are gone. All their pleasures are gone.
THEN
Verse 47.
“Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab
In the latter days,” declares the LORD.
“Yet I will restore” WHAT? You’ve got to be kidding! They are wiped out and they are wrong on so many levels. And yet. This phrase is gold. This is Moab’s hope. This is MY HOPE!
God will restore Moab? There is no monetary help. There is no military help. The nextdoor neighbours are not helping. This is ruin on steroids.
When is this restoration? There is no Moab today. The geography we call Moab has been subsumed into modern-day Jordan. But a one-to-one correspondence with Moab is not good exegesis.
What I DO know is that for every person on the planet, no matter how bad things have been, no matter how far you have fallen, rejecting your neighbours, rejecting the truth they want to tell us, rejecting God’s awesome love—no matter how bad it has been—yet I will do something about that, says the Lord.
God says there is no one so far that he cannot make it right.
Isaiah 59 says God’s hand is not so short that it cannot save. He longs to save us, to help us in our unbelief, to help us in our waywardness, in our rejection of him. Isaiah 45.22 says, ‘Turn to me, and be saved!’
No matter how dark it is in your life, no matter the length of your lament, God can find you. He longs to bring you into relationship with him.
CONCLUSION
God is calling each of us to know him and to walk with him, today and throughout our days. Have you received Yeshua as your messiah and Lord? He is risen from the dead! Have you renounced your sin, your idolatry, your forsaking God and given him First Place in your life? If not, please, do so now, just now, as we pray together. Use your own words, if you want, but yield, surrender, to the Lord of life.
PRAYER
Then please write us (admin@jewsforjesus.org.au) to tell us what you have just done, and we will send you literature and encourage you. You are part of our family; we love and appreciate you. And we want you to enjoy the presence of the Lord who calls, who knows, who blesses and builds us up.
We hope to see you again next week as we study chapter 49. Until then, Shabbat shalom!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes, Albert, Commentary on the Old Testament. (Published by many, from 1880 on)
Henry, Matthew, Commentary.
Keown, Gerald, Scalise, Pamela, Smothers, Thomas, Word Biblical Commentary. Book of Jeremiah (Part 2). 1995.
McConnville, Gordon, Jeremiah, New Bible Commentary.
Wright, Christopher, The Message of Jeremiah, The Bible Speaks Today. Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2014.
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ACTUAL TEXT
A Message About Moab
48 Concerning Moab:
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says:
“Woe to Nebo, for it will be ruined.
Kiriathaim will be disgraced and captured;
the stronghold[a] will be disgraced and shattered.
2
Moab will be praised no more;
in Heshbon[b] people will plot her downfall:
‘Come, let us put an end to that nation.’
You, the people of Madmen,[c] will also be silenced;
the sword will pursue you.
3
Cries of anguish arise from Horonaim,
cries of great havoc and destruction.
4
Moab will be broken;
her little ones will cry out.[d]
5
They go up the hill to Luhith,
weeping bitterly as they go;
on the road down to Horonaim
anguished cries over the destruction are heard.
6
Flee! Run for your lives;
become like a bush[e] in the desert.
7
Since you trust in your deeds and riches,
you too will be taken captive,
and Chemosh will go into exile,
together with his priests and officials.
8
The destroyer will come against every town,
and not a town will escape.
The valley will be ruined
and the plateau destroyed,
because the Lord has spoken.
9
Put salt on Moab,
for she will be laid waste[f];
her towns will become desolate,
with no one to live in them.
10
“A curse on anyone who is lax in doing the Lord’s work!
A curse on anyone who keeps their sword from bloodshed!
11
“Moab has been at rest from youth,
like wine left on its dregs,
not poured from one jar to another—
she has not gone into exile.
So she tastes as she did,
and her aroma is unchanged.
12
But days are coming,”
declares the Lord,
“when I will send men who pour from pitchers,
and they will pour her out;
they will empty her pitchers
and smash her jars.
13
Then Moab will be ashamed of Chemosh,
as Israel was ashamed
when they trusted in Bethel.
14
“How can you say, ‘We are warriors,
men valiant in battle’?
15
Moab will be destroyed and her towns invaded;
her finest young men will go down in the slaughter,”
declares the King, whose name is the Lord Almighty.
16
“The fall of Moab is at hand;
her calamity will come quickly.
17
Mourn for her, all who live around her,
all who know her fame;
say, ‘How broken is the mighty scepter,
how broken the glorious staff!’
18
“Come down from your glory
and sit on the parched ground,
you inhabitants of Daughter Dibon,
for the one who destroys Moab
will come up against you
and ruin your fortified cities.
19
Stand by the road and watch,
you who live in Aroer.
Ask the man fleeing and the woman escaping,
ask them, ‘What has happened?’
20
Moab is disgraced, for she is shattered.
Wail and cry out!
Announce by the Arnon
that Moab is destroyed.
21
Judgment has come to the plateau—
to Holon, Jahzah and Mephaath,
22
to Dibon, Nebo and Beth Diblathaim,
23
to Kiriathaim, Beth Gamul and Beth Meon,
24
to Kerioth and Bozrah—
to all the towns of Moab, far and near.
25
Moab’s horn[g] is cut off;
her arm is broken,”
declares the Lord.
26
“Make her drunk,
for she has defied the Lord.
Let Moab wallow in her vomit;
let her be an object of ridicule.
27
Was not Israel the object of your ridicule?
Was she caught among thieves,
that you shake your head in scorn
whenever you speak of her?
28
Abandon your towns and dwell among the rocks,
you who live in Moab.
Be like a dove that makes its nest
at the mouth of a cave.
29
“We have heard of Moab’s pride—
how great is her arrogance!—
of her insolence, her pride, her conceit
and the haughtiness of her heart.
30
I know her insolence but it is futile,”
declares the Lord,
“and her boasts accomplish nothing.
31
Therefore I wail over Moab,
for all Moab I cry out,
I moan for the people of Kir Hareseth.
32
I weep for you, as Jazer weeps,
you vines of Sibmah.
Your branches spread as far as the sea[h];
they reached as far as[i] Jazer.
The destroyer has fallen
on your ripened fruit and grapes.
33
Joy and gladness are gone
from the orchards and fields of Moab.
I have stopped the flow of wine from the presses;
no one treads them with shouts of joy.
Although there are shouts,
they are not shouts of joy.
34
“The sound of their cry rises
from Heshbon to Elealeh and Jahaz,
from Zoar as far as Horonaim and Eglath Shelishiyah,
for even the waters of Nimrim are dried up.
35
In Moab I will put an end
to those who make offerings on the high places
and burn incense to their gods,”
declares the Lord.
36
“So my heart laments for Moab like the music of a pipe;
it laments like a pipe for the people of Kir Hareseth.
The wealth they acquired is gone.
37
Every head is shaved
and every beard cut off;
every hand is slashed
and every waist is covered with sackcloth.
38
On all the roofs in Moab
and in the public squares
there is nothing but mourning,
for I have broken Moab
like a jar that no one wants,”
declares the Lord.
39
“How shattered she is! How they wail!
How Moab turns her back in shame!
Moab has become an object of ridicule,
an object of horror to all those around her.”
40 This is what the Lord says:
“Look! An eagle is swooping down,
spreading its wings over Moab.
41
Kerioth[j] will be captured
and the strongholds taken.
In that day the hearts of Moab’s warriors
will be like the heart of a woman in labor.
42
Moab will be destroyed as a nation
because she defied the Lord.
43
Terror and pit and snare await you,
you people of Moab,”
declares the Lord.
44
“Whoever flees from the terror
will fall into a pit,
whoever climbs out of the pit
will be caught in a snare;
for I will bring on Moab
the year of her punishment,”
declares the Lord.
45
“In the shadow of Heshbon
the fugitives stand helpless,
for a fire has gone out from Heshbon,
a blaze from the midst of Sihon;
it burns the foreheads of Moab,
the skulls of the noisy boasters.
46
Woe to you, Moab!
The people of Chemosh are destroyed;
your sons are taken into exile
and your daughters into captivity
47
“Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab
in days to come,”
declares the Lord.
Here ends the judgment on Moab.
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