Amos 2:2

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 comments

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: But I will send a fire ... and it shall

I will send a fire: see . 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 . 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.

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:Ver. 2. But I will send a fire] See Amos 1:4. And it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth] A city so fair and large that it hath a plural name, which signifieth cities by way of excellence; as Athens was called the Greece of Greece; Rome, the epitome of the world. ‘Eλλαςελλαδοςεπιτομητηςοικουμενης. And Moab shall die with tumult] With all these together, on a huddle, as it were: they are here set down by an elegant asyndeton, to set forth the suddenness and terror of the judgment threatened. They shall be stormed, and have no quarter given them. Here Osiander noteth, that it is one of the many punishments of sin for a man not to die in his bed, but in battle. It was promised to Josiah "he should die in peace," 2 Chronicles 34:28. True it is he died in battle; but he died before that general desolation that followed shortly after (for, indeed, with him died all the prosperity of that people). And beside, his weeping and humiliation had altered the very nature of the trouble, and made war to be peace to him.

(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).

Verse 2. The palaces of Kirioth] This was one of the principal cities of the Moabites. Moab shall die with tumult] All these expressions seem to refer to this city's being taken by storm, which was followed by a total slaughter of its inhabitants.

2. the palaces of Kerioth] more exactly Ḳ ?eriyyoth: 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 Chĕ ?mτsh, and to Moab. And I brought back [or, took captive] thence the altar-hearth of Davdoh (?), and I dragged it before Chĕ ?mτsh in Ḳ ?eriyyoth.” 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, Ḳ ?eriyyoth is not mentioned, it has been supposed by many that Ar and Ḳ ?eriyyoth 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; Psalms 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 shτphβr or horn, calling them on, as Jeremiah 4:19 (‘the shouting of battle’), Zephaniah 1:16, Job 39:25. The shpτhβr was the curved horn of a cow or ram, to be carefully distinguished from the long straight metal ḥ ?atzτtzerβh, 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 shτphβr was principally, and in early Israel perhaps entirely, used for secular purposes, chiefly to give signals in war (Judges 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. Psalms 47:5): as a sacred instrument it is mentioned rarely, and mostly, if not entirely, in later writers (Psalms 81:4; Psalms 98:6; Psalms 150:3; 2 Chronicles 15:14; cf. Leviticus 23:24; Leviticus 25:9, and Joe 2:15).

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.

1-3. The sin and punishment of Moab. Moab — The third nation east of the Jordan closely related to the Hebrews (Amos 1:11; Amos 1:13). The territory of the Moabites was to the south of Ammon, on the uplands east of the Dead Sea.