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Against Moab and Judah
v. 1. Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions of Moab, the nation occupying the country east of the Dead Sea, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, being fully determined upon His way of punishing the Moabites, because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime, taking vengeance upon the dead by burning his body to powder, a crime showing an almost unbelievable vindictiveness;
v. 2. but I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kirioth, the capital in the valley of the Arnon; and Moab shall die, be overthrown in battle, with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet, in a victorious attack on the part of the enemies;
v. 3. and I will cut off the judge, all the magistrates, from the midst thereof and will slay all the princes thereof with him, saith the Lord, so that Moab would cease to exist as a nation. This came to pass at the time of the Babylonian and Chaldean conquests.
v. 4. Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, the southern kingdom being named here in order to have a full list of the countries adjoining Israel, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, refusing also here to change His decision, because they have despised the Law of the Lord and have not kept His commandments, the complaint which is voiced by practically all prophets, and their lies caused them to err, their idols leading them into every kind of foolishness and sin, after the which their fathers have walked, for idolatry had been practiced in the country almost continually, secretly, if not openly;
v. 5. but I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem. Here it was true, as the maxim has it, that a person is rightly judged by the company he keeps and may be obliged to share the lot of his friends.