21:29 Woe to you, Moab.
You are ruined, O people of Chemosh! 1
He has made his sons fugitives,
and his daughters the prisoners of King Sihon of the Amorites.
1:24 Now to the one who is able to keep you from falling, 2 and to cause you to stand, rejoicing, 3 without blemish 4 before his glorious presence, 5
48:13 The people of Moab will be disappointed by their god Chemosh.
They will be as disappointed as the people of Israel were
when they put their trust in the calf god at Bethel. 6
1 sn The note of holy war emerges here as the victory is a victory over the local gods as well as over the people.
2 tn The construction in Greek is a double accusative object-complement. “You” is the object and “free from falling” is the adjectival complement.
3 tn Grk “with rejoicing.” The prepositional clause is placed after “his glorious presence” in Greek, but most likely goes with “cause you to stand.”
4 tn The construction in Greek is a double accusative object-complement. “You” is the object and “without blemish” is the adjectival complement.
5 tn Or “in the presence of his glory,” “before his glory.”
6 tn Heb “Moab will be ashamed because of Chemosh as the house of Israel was ashamed because of Bethel, their [source of] confidence.” The “shame” is, of course, the disappointment, disillusionment because of the lack of help from these gods in which they trusted (for this nuance of the verb see BDB 101 s.v. בּוֹשׁ Qal.2 and compare usage in Jer 2:13; Isa 20:5). Because of the parallelism, some see the reference to Bethel to be a reference to a West Semitic god worshiped by the people of Israel (see J. P. Hyatt, “Bethel [Deity],” IDB 1:390 for the arguments). However, there is no evidence in the OT that such a god was worshiped in Israel, and there is legitimate evidence that northern Israel placed its confidence in the calf god that Jeroboam set up in Bethel (cf. 1 Kgs 12:28-32; Hos 10:5; 8:5-6; Amos 7:10-17).