The destroyer of Moab and his cities has come up, and the choicest of his young men have gone down to slaughter, declares the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.
The destruction is here further prophesied of very largely and with a great copiousness and variety of expression, and very pathetically and in moving language, designed not only to awaken them by a national repentance and reformation to prevent the trouble, or by a personal repentance and reformation to prepare for it, but to affect us with the calamitous state of human life, which is...
Commenting on Jeremiah 48:14-47
The calamity of Moab is near to come,.... As it did come within live years after the destruction of Jerusalem, as observed on Jer 48:12; out of Josephus: and his affliction hasteth fast: or, "his evil" (z) the evil of punishment for his sin; his utter destruction. (z) "malum ejus", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Calvin, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius, Schmidt.
gone up . . . gone down--in antithesis. out of her cities--Rather, "Moab . . . and her cities are gone up," namely, pass away in the ascending smoke of their conflagration (Jos 8:20-21; Jdg 20:40). When this took place, the young warriors would go down from the burning citadels only to meet their own slaughter [GROTIUS].