Jeremiah 48:8

48:8 The destroyer will come against every town.

Not one town will escape.

The towns in the valley will be destroyed.

The cities on the high plain will be laid waste. ¹ 

I, the Lord, have spoken! ² 

Jeremiah 48:15

48:15 Moab will be destroyed. Its towns will be invaded.

Its finest young men will be slaughtered. ³ 

I, the King, the Lord who rules over all, ⁴  affirm it! ⁵ 

Jeremiah 25:9

25:9 So I, the Lord, affirm that ⁶  I will send for all the peoples of the north ⁷  and my servant, ⁸  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy ⁹  this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it ¹⁰  and make them everlasting ruins. ¹¹  I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. ¹² 

Isaiah 16:2

16:2 At the fords of the Arnon ¹³ 

the Moabite women are like a bird

that flies about when forced from its nest. ¹⁴ 

Ezekiel 25:9-10

25:9 So look, I am about to open up Moab’s flank, ¹⁵  eliminating the cities, ¹⁶  including its frontier cities, ¹⁷  the beauty of the land – Beth Jeshimoth, Baal Meon, and Kiriathaim. 25:10 I will hand it over, ¹⁸  along with the Ammonites, ¹⁹  to the tribes ²⁰  of the east, so that the Ammonites will no longer be remembered among the nations.

¹ tn Heb “The valley will be destroyed and the tableland be laid waste.” However, in the context this surely refers to the towns and not to the valley and the tableland itself.

² tn Heb “which/for/as the Lord has spoken.” The first person form has again been adopted because the Lord is the speaker throughout (cf. v. 1).

³ tn Heb “will go down to the slaughter.”

⁴ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” For an explanation of the translation and meaning of this title see the study note on 2:19.

⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the King whose name is Yahweh of armies.” The first person form has again been adopted because the Lord is the speaker throughout this oracle/ these oracles (cf. v. 1).

⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

⁷ sn The many allusions to trouble coming from the north are now clarified: it is the armies of Babylon which included within it contingents from many nations. See 1:14, 15; 4:6; 6:1, 22; 10:22; 13:20 for earlier allusions.

⁸ sn Nebuchadnezzar is called the Lord’s servant also in Jer 27:6; 43:10. He was the Lord’s servant in that he was the agent used by the Lord to punish his disobedient people. Assyria was earlier referred to as the Lord’s “rod” (Isa 10:5-6) and Cyrus is called his “shepherd” and his “anointed” (Isa 44:28; 45:1). P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, and J. F. Drinkard (Jeremiah 1-25 [WBC], 364) make the interesting observation that the terms here are very similar to the terms in v. 4. The people of Judah ignored the servants, the prophets, he sent to turn them away from evil. So he will send other servants whom they cannot ignore.

⁹ tn The word used here was used in the early years of Israel’s conquest for the action of killing all the men, women, and children in the cities of Canaan, destroying all their livestock, and burning their cities down. This policy was intended to prevent Israel from being corrupted by paganism (Deut 7:2; 20:17-18; Josh 6:18, 21). It was to be extended to any city that led Israel away from worshiping God (Deut 13:15) and any Israelite who brought an idol into his house (Deut 7:26). Here the policy is being directed against Judah as well as against her neighbors because of her persistent failure to heed God’s warnings through the prophets. For further usage of this term in application to foreign nations in the book of Jeremiah see 50:21, 26; 51:3.

¹⁰ tn Heb “will utterly destroy them.” The referent (this land, its inhabitants, and the nations surrounding it) has been specified in the translation for clarity, since the previous “them” referred to Nebuchadnezzar and his armies.

¹¹ sn The Hebrew word translated “everlasting” is the word often translated “eternal.” However, it sometimes has a more limited time reference. For example it refers to the lifetime of a person who became a “lasting slave” to another person (see Exod 21:6; Deut 15:17). It is also used to refer to the long life wished for a king (1 Kgs 1:31; Neh 2:3). The time frame here is to be qualified at least with reference to Judah and Jerusalem as seventy years (see 29:10-14 and compare v. 12).

¹² tn Heb “I will make them an object of horror and a hissing and everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been broken up to separate the last object from the first two which are of slightly different connotation, i.e., they denote the reaction to the latter.

¹³ tn The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.

¹⁴ tn Heb “like a bird fleeing, thrust away [from] a nest, the daughters of Moab are [at] the fords of Arnon.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “shoulder.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “from the cities.” The verb “eliminating” has been added in the translation to reflect the privative use of the preposition (see BDB 583 s.v. מִן 7.b).

¹⁷ tn Heb “from its cities, from its end.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “I will give it for a possession.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “the sons of Ammon” (twice in this verse).

²⁰ tn Heb “the sons.”