Amos 2:2

But I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth: and Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(2) Kirioth.—This properly signifies a group of towns, but here refers to a single large town in Moab, the modern Kureiât. (Comp. Jeremiah 48:24.)

CURSE ON JUDAH.

Great privileges have met with mad and foolish despite. Exalted to the highest heaven of possibility, Judah has despised the “Law of the Lord,” instead of preserving, with sacred reverence, His ordinances and institutions.

Their lies.—i.e., their false deities, which they have treated as divine. “The lies after which the fathers walked deceived the children. The children canonise the errors of their fathers. Human opinion is as dogmatic as revelation” (Pusey).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:1-8 The evil passions of the heart break out in various forms; but the Lord looks to our motives, as well as our conduct. Those that deal cruelly, shall be cruelly dealt with. Other nations were reckoned with for injuries done to men; Judah is reckoned with for dishonour done to God. Judah despised the law of the Lord; and he justly gave them up to strong delusion; nor was it any excuse for their sin, that they were the lies, the idols, after which their fathers walked. The worst abominations and most grievous oppressions have been committed by some of the professed worshippers of the Lord. Such conduct leads many to unbelief and vile idolatry.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

It shall devour the palaces of Kerioth - Literally, "the cities," that is, a collection of cities. It may have received a plural form upon some enlargement, as Jerusalem received a dual form, as a double city. The name is, in different forms, very common . In the plain or high downs of Moab itself, there were both Kiriathaim, "double city" and Kerloth Jeremiah 48:23-24; in Naphthali, a Kiriathaim, (1 Chronicles 6:76, (1 Chronicles 6:61 in Hebrew)) or Kartan Joshua 21:32; in Judah, the Kerioth Joshua 15:25 from where the wretched Judas has his name Iscariot; in Zebulon, Kartah Joshua 21:34 also, which reappears as the Numidian Cirta. Moab had also a Kiriath-huzoth, "city of streets" Numbers 22:39, within the Arnon . This alone was within the proper border of Moab, such as the Armorites had left it.

Kerioth and Kiriathaim were in the plain country which Israel had won from the Amorites, and its possession would imply an aggression of Moab. Jeroboam II had probably at this time brought Moab to a temporary submission (see the note at Amos 6:14); but Israel only required fealty and tribute of Moab; Moab appears even before the captivity of the 2 12 tribes, to have invaded the possessions of Israel. Kerioth was probably a new capital, beyond the Arnon, now adorned with "palaces" and enlarged, as "Paris, Prague, Cracow , "London, are composed of different towns. In Jerome's time, it had probably ceased to be .

Shall die with tumult - Jeremiah, when prophesying the destruction of Moab, designates it by this same name "sons of tumult Jeremiah 48:45. A flame shall devour the corner of Moab and the crown of the sons of tumult." And probably herein he explains the original prophecy of Balaam, "shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of tumult" Numbers 24:17. As they had done, so should it be done to them; tumults they caused, "in tumult" they should perish.

After the subdual of Moab by Nebuchadnezzar, it disappears as a nation, unless indeed Daniel in his Prophecy, "Edom and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon shall escape out of his hand" Amos 11:41 (Antiochus Epiphanes,) means the nations themselves, and not such as should be like them. Else the intermarriage with Moabite women Ezra 9:1 is mentioned only as that with women of other pagan nations which had ceased to be. The old name, Moabitis, is still mentioned; but the Arabs had possessed themselves of it, and bore the old name. Alexander Jannaeus "subdued" we are told, "of the Arabians, the Moabites and Gileadires," and then, again, when in difficulty, made it over with its fortified places, to the king of the Arabians . Among the cities which Alexander took from the king of the Arabians , are cities throughout Moab, both in that part in which they had succeeded to Israel, and their proper territory south of the Arnon .

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2. Kirioth—the chief city of Moab, called also Kir-Moab (Isa 15:1). The form is plural here, as including both the acropolis and town itself (see Jer 48:24, 41, Margin).

die with tumult—that is, amid the tumult of battle (Ho 10:14).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I will send a fire: see Amos 1:4.

Moab; some think, but I know not on what ground, that there was a city of this name, and meant here, but on better reason we conclude it to be the whole country, or by a metonymy the people, who were the posterity of Lot by his elder daughter.

It shall devour the palaces: see Amos 1:4.

Kerioth; a strong and principal city of this country; or the cities, so the word will bear, and then the threat is against all their cities.

Moab, the Moabites, all sorts and ranks of them, shall die, be destroyed, and perish utterly, with tumult; such as soldiers in fight or assaults make, when they carry all by force, bearing down all opposition, and slaying all opposers, with that rigour which in such cases is very usual.

With shouting; as conquerors shout, to the end they may dishearten the enemy, and animate their fellow soldiers.

With the sound of the trumpet: this added partly to explain, and partly to confirm, what the prophet had foretold.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

But I will send a fire upon Moab,.... Either on the whole country, or on some particular city so called, as in all the other prophecies; and there was a city called Moab, now Areopolis; see Gill on Jeremiah 48:4; though it may be put for the whole country, into which an enemy should be sent to destroy it, even Nebuchadnezzar:

and it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth; a principal city in the land of Moab; according to Kimchi, it was the royal city, and therefore mention is made of the palaces of it, here being the palace of the king and his princes; see Jeremiah 48:24; though the word may be rendered cities, as it is by the Septuagint and Arabic versions; and so the Targum,

"and shall consume the palaces of the fortified place;''

and so may signify all the cities of Moab, and their palaces: or however may be put for them:

and Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet: that is, the Moabites shall die, not in their beds, and in peace, but in war, amidst the howlings of the wounded, the shouts of soldiers, the clashing of arms, and the sound of trumpets,

Geneva Study Bible

But I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kirioth: and Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. the palaces of Kerioth] more exactly Ḳeriyyoth: named here and Jeremiah 48:41 (cf. Jeremiah 48:24) as a representative city of Moab, and hence evidently a considerable place, if not the capital of Moab. Mesha, also, in a passage of his Inscription (lines 10–13), sufficiently interesting to extract in full, speaks of it in terms implying that it was a place of importance, possessing a sanctuary of the national god (Numbers 21:29; 1 Kings 11:7), and a royal residence: “And the men of Gad had dwelt in the land of Ataroth (Numbers 32:3; Numbers 32:34) from of old; and the king of Israel built for himself Ataroth. And I fought against the city, and took it. And I slew all [the people of] the city, a gazing-stock [cf. Nahum 3:6] to Chĕmôsh, and to Moab. And I brought back [or, took captive] thence the altar-hearth of Davdoh (?), and I dragged it before Chĕmôsh in Ḳeriyyoth.” From the fact that, notwithstanding its importance, it is not mentioned in the long enumeration of Moabite cities in Isaiah 15-16, and that conversely where Ar, the capital of Moab, is named, Ḳeriyyoth is not mentioned, it has been supposed by many that Ar and Ḳeriyyoth were different names of the same place. Its situation is uncertain, though, if it was identical with Ar, it will have lain somewhere on the N. or N.E. border of Moab, in the valley of the Arnon (see Deuteronomy 2:9; Deuteronomy 2:18).

and Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the horn] The nation is personified, and pictured here as dying, under the assault of its foes, as in Isaiah 25:11 it is pictured as drowning. The tumult is the confused roar, or din, of the fray (cf. Hosea 10:14; Psalm 74:23; the same word, of a distant roar of a great multitude, or of rushing waters, Isaiah 17:12-13): the shouting, as Amos 1:14, is that of the attacking foe, parallel with die shôphâr or horn, calling them on, as Jeremiah 4:19 (‘the shouting of battle’), Zephaniah 1:16, Job 39:25.

The shpôhâr was the curved horn of a cow or ram, to be carefully distinguished from the long straight metal ḥatzôtzerâh, or trumpet, with expanding mouth, represented on Jewish coins, and on the Arch of Titus (Stainer, Music of the Bible, p. 131; in use also among the Assyrians, ib. p. 132 f.). The shôphâr was principally, and in early Israel perhaps entirely, used for secular purposes, chiefly to give signals in war (Jdg 3:27; 2 Samuel 2:28; 2 Samuel 20:1, &c., and here), or to raise an alarm (see on Amos 3:6), sometimes also to announce or accompany an important public event, such as an accession (1 Kings 1:34; 1 Kings 1:39), or other joyous occasion (2 Samuel 6:15[142]; cf. Psalm 47:5): as a sacred instrument it is mentioned rarely, and mostly, if not entirely, in later writers (Psalm 81:4; Psalm 98:6; Psalm 150:3; 2 Chronicles 15:14; cf. Leviticus 23:24; Leviticus 25:9, and Joel 2:15). The ḥatzôtzerâh, on the other hand, appears rarely as a secular instrument (Hosea 5:8; 2 Kings 11:14), but often, especially in later times, in the Chronicler’s descriptions of religious ceremonies, as a sacred, instrument (2 Kings 12:13; 1 Chronicles 13:8; 1 Chronicles 15:28 [added to the earlier narrative of 2 Samuel 6:5; 2 Samuel 6:15]; 2 Chronicles 15:14; 2 Chronicles 20:28; Ezra 3:10, &c.; cf. Numbers 10:3-9). The two words are very unfortunately confused in the English version, except where they occur together, when shôphâr is rendered ‘cornet’ (e.g. Hosea 5:8; Psalm 98:6; 1 Chronicles 15:28; 2 Chronicles 15:14). Comp. Stainer, Music of the Bible, p. 127; Nowack, Heb. Arch. i. 277 f.

[142] Note that the shôphâr is here in the hands of lay Israelites.

Shôphârs as used in a modern synagogue, on New Year’s Day (Leviticus 23:24, Numbers 29:1), and at the close of the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25:9). (From Engel’s Music of the Most Ancient Nations, 1870, p. 293.)

Two silver ḥatzôtzerahs (Numbers 10:2), as figured on the Arch of Titus, in front of the Table of Shewbread. (From the Speaker’s Commentary, i. 363. Comp. Reland, De Spoliis Templi, 1716, p. 70.)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - Kirioth; cities, and so taken as an appellative by the Septuagint translators, τῶν πόλεων αὐτῆς: but it is doubtless a proper name of one of the chief Moabite towns (Jeremiah 48:24, 41). Keil, after Burckhardt, identifies it with the decayed town of Kereyat, or Korriat; others, with Ar, or Kir, the old capital (Isaiah 15:1). The plural termination of the word,like Athenae, Thebae, etc., may denote a double city - upper and lower, or old and new. Moab shall die. The nation is personified. With tumult; caused by war (comp. Jeremiah 48:45, and the prophecy of Balaam, Numbers 24:17). Septuagint, ἐν ἀδυναμίᾳ, "in weakness." With shouting. Omitted by the Vulgate (see on Amos 1:14). Trumpet (Amos 3:6; Jeremiah 4:19). Trochon cites Virgil, 'AEneid,' 2:313, "Exoritur clamorque virum clangorque tubarum," "Rises the shout of men and trumpets' blare." Amos 2:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Moab. - Amos 2:1. "Thus saith Jehovah: for three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I shall not reverse it, because it has burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime, Amos 2:2. I send fire into Moab, and it will devour the palaces of Kirioth, and Moab will perish in the tumult, in the war-cry, in the trumpet-blast. Amos 2:3. And I cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and all its princes do I strangle with it, saith Jehovah." The burning of the bones of the king of Edom is not burning while he was still alive, but the burning of the corpse into lime, i.e., so completely that the bones turned into powder like lime (D. Kimchi), to cool his wrath still further upon the dead man (cf. 2 Kings 23:16). This is the only thing blamed, not his having put him to death. No record has been preserved of this event in the historical books of the Old Testament; but it was no doubt connected with the war referred to in 2 Kings 3, which Joram of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah waged against the Moabites in company with the king of Edom; so that the Jewish tradition found in Jerome, viz., that after this war the Moabites dug up the bones of the king of Edom from the grace, and heaped insults upon them by burning them to ashes, is apparently not without foundation. As Amos in the case of all the other nations has mentioned only crimes that were committed against the covenant nation, the one with which the Moabites are charged must have been in some way associated with either Israel or Judah, that is to say, it must have been committed upon a king of Edom, who was a vassal of Judah, and therefore not very long after this war, since the Edomites shook off their dependence upon Judah in less than ten years from that time (2 Kings 8:20). As a punishment for this, Moab was to be laid waste by the fire of war, and Keriyoth with its palaces to be burned down. הקּריּות is not an appellative noun (τῶν πόλεων αὐτῆς, lxx), but a proper name of one of the chief cities of Moab (cf. Jeremiah 48:24, Jeremiah 48:41), the ruins of which have been discovered by Burckhardt (Syr. p. 630) and Seetzen (ii. p. 342, cf. iv. p. 384) in the decayed town of Kereyat or Krrit. The application of the term מת to Moab is to be explained on the supposition that the nation is personified. שׁאון signifies war tumult, and בּתרוּעה is explained as in Amos 1:14 by בּקול שׁופר, blast of the trumpets, the signal for the assault or for the commencement of the battle. The judge with all the princes shall be cut off miqqirbâh, i.e., out of the land of Moab. The feminine suffix refers to Moab as a land or kingdom, and not to Keriyoth. From the fact that the shōphēt is mentioned instead of the king, it has been concluded by some that Moab had no king at that time, but had only a shōphēt as its ruler; and they have sought to account for this on the ground that Moab was at that time subject to the kingdom of the ten tribes (Hitzig and Ewald). But there is no notice in the history of anything of the kind, and it cannot possibly be inferred from the fact that Jeroboam restored the ancient boundaries of the kingdom as far as the Dead Sea (2 Kings 14:25). Shōphēt is analogous to tōmēkh shēbhet in Amos 1:5, and is probably nothing more than a rhetorical expression applied to the מלך, who is so called in the threat against Ammon, and simply used for the sake of variety. The threatening prophecies concerning all the nations and kingdoms mentioned from Amos 1:6 onwards were fulfilled by the Chaldeans, who conquered all these kingdoms, and carried the people themselves into captivity. For fuller remarks upon this point, see at Jeremiah 48 and Ezekiel 25:8.