(41) Kerioth.--(See Note on Jeremiah 48:24.) Here the word is used with the article, and should probably be translated, as in the margin, the cities, as painting the wide-spread devastation that was to come on all the fortresses.

As the heart of a woman in her pangs.--See Notes on Jeremiah 30:6; Isaiah 13:8; Isaiah 21:3. The precise phrase, however, occurs only here and in Jeremiah 49:22.

Verse 41. - Kerioth is taken. Kerioth has been already mentioned in ver. 24 (see note). Another possible rendering is, The cities are taken, and this certainly agrees better with the parallel line. But a plural of kiryah, a city, does not occur elsewhere. If the identification of Kerioth with Ar-moab, the capital of Moab, be accepted (see on ver. 24), the equalization of Kerioth and "the strongholds" seems to be a stumbling block. Strongholds; or, mountain fastnesses (Jeremiah 51:30).

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.Kerioth is taken,.... The name of a city in Moab, as in Jeremiah 48:24; so Jarchi, and others; but Kimchi and Abarbinel observe, that it may be taken for an appellative, and be rendered "the cities"; everyone of the cities of Moab, which were as easily and quickly taken as one city; these may intend the cities in the plain, as the strong holds those in high places:

and the strong holds are surprised; everyone of them; so that there was not a city, or a fortified place, but what came into the enemies' hands:

and the mighty men's hearts in Moab at that day shall be as the heart of a woman in her pangs; even the hearts of the soldiers, and the most courageous generals, shall sink within them; and they be not only as timorous as women in common, but as low spirited as a woman when she finds her pains are coming upon her, and the time of her delivery is at hand.