(23) Kiriathaim.--See Jeremiah 48:1. Beth-gamul. --The place is not named in the earlier lists of Numbers 32:34-38 and Joshua 13:16-20. The name (=house of the camel) has a parallel in Gamala, and appears in the modern Um-el-Jemal, south of Buzrah, in the Ha-ran. This, however, lies out of the range of the Mishor, or "plain country," to which the cities here enumerated belonged.Beth-meon.--The name appears in its full form as Beth-baal-meon in Joshua 13:17, as Baal-meon in Numbers 32:38; 1Chronicles 5:8; Ezekiel 25:8. The name Meon (= citadel of heaven) survives in the modern Mi'un. Its combination with Baal makes it probable that it was famous as a sanctuary where the Moabite Baal was worshipped. Verse 23. - Kiriathaim (see on ver. 1). Beth-gamul. Nowhere else mentioned. Beth-meon. Called Baal-meon, Numbers 32:38; Beth-baal-meon, Joshua 13:17. The extensive ruins of Ma'in are a short distance south of Heshbon. 48:14-47. The destruction of Moab is further prophesied, to awaken them by national repentance and reformation to prevent the trouble, or by a personal repentance and reformation to prepare for it. In reading this long roll of threatenings, and mediating on the terror, it will be of more use to us to keep in view the power of God's anger and the terror of his judgments, and to have our hearts possessed with a holy awe of God and of his wrath, than to search into all the figures and expressions here used. Yet it is not perpetual destruction. The chapter ends with a promise of their return out of captivity in the latter days. Even with Moabites God will not contend for ever, nor be always wroth. The Jews refer it to the days of the Messiah; then the captives of the Gentiles, under the yoke of sin and Satan, shall be brought back by Divine grace, which shall make them free indeed.And upon Kirjathaim,.... Of which see Jeremiah 48:1;and upon Bethgamul; this is nowhere else mentioned in Scripture; supposed by Grotius to be the Maccala of Ptolemy, put for Camala: and upon Bethmeon: of which see Isaiah 15:2. |
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