41 Kerioth is taken, and the strongholds are seized, and the heart of the mighty men of Moab at that day shall be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.
and they shall be dismayed; pangs and sorrows shall take hold [of them]; they shall be in pain as a woman in travail: they shall look in amazement one at another; their faces [shall be] faces of flame.
Therefore are my loins filled with anguish; pangs have taken hold on me, as the pangs of a woman in travail: I am pained so that I can't hear; I am dismayed so that I can't see.
Ask now, and see whether a man does travail with child: why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?
Behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle, and spread out his wings against Bozrah: and the heart of the mighty men of Edom at that day shall be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.
Now why do you cry out aloud? Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished, That pains have taken hold of you as of a woman in travail? Be in pain, and labor to bring forth, daughter of Zion, Like a woman in travail; For now you will go forth out of the city, And will dwell in the field, And will come even to Babylon. There you will be rescued. There Yahweh will redeem you from the hand of your enemies.
Like as a woman with child, who draws near the time of her delivery, is in pain and cries out in her pangs; so we have been before you, Yahweh. We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not worked any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.
For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as of her who brings forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, who gasps for breath, who spreads her hands, [saying], Woe is me now! for my soul faints before the murderers.
The king of Babylon has heard the news of them, and his hands wax feeble: anguish has taken hold of him, [and] pangs as of a woman in travail.
The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they remain in their strongholds; their might has failed; they are become as women: her dwelling-places are set on fire; her bars are broken.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Jeremiah 48
Commentary on Jeremiah 48 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 48
Moab is next set to the bar before Jeremiah the prophet, whom God has constituted judge over nations and kingdoms, from his mouth to receive its doom. Isaiah's predictions concerning Moab had had their accomplishment (we had the predictions Isa. 15 and 16 and the like Amos 2:1), and they were fulfilled when the Assyrians, under Salmanassar, invaded and distressed Moab. But this is a prophecy of the desolations of Moab by the Chaldeans, which were accomplished under Nebuzaradan, about five years after he had destroyed Jerusalem. Here is,
Jer 48:1-13
We may observe in these verses,
Jer 48:14-47
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 liable to such lamentable occurrences, and with the power of God's anger and the terror of his judgments, when he comes forth to contend with a provoking people. In reading this long roll of threatenings, and meditating on the terror of them, it will be of more use to us to keep this in our eye, and to get our hearts thereby possessed with a holy awe of God and of his wrath, than to enquire critically into all the lively figures and metaphors here used.