(42) Moab shall be destroyed . . .--What is predicted is not annihilation (see Jeremiah 48:47), but the loss of national independence. And the cause of this punishment is once more asserted. With Moab, as with other nations, it was her self-exalting pride that called for chastisement.

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 Moab shall be destroyed from being a people,.... For some time, not always; since the captivity of Moab is promised to be returned, Jeremiah 48:47; or from being such a people as they had been, enjoying so much ease, wealth, power, and prosperity. Abarbinel takes it to be a comparative, and renders it, "more than a people"; that is, shall be destroyed more than any other people; but the former sense is best;

because he hath magnified himself against the Lord; the Targum is, against the people of the Lord; this is the cause of his destruction; See Gill on Jeremiah 48:26.