2 Kings 3:25

25 They made ruins of the cities. Each man threw his stone on every good field, covering it. They stopped up all the wells. They chopped down all the good trees. Finally, all that remained was Kir-Hareset behind its stone wall, with the slingers surrounding and attacking it.

2 Kings 3:25 Meaning and Commentary

2 Kings 3:25

And they beat down the cities
Demolished the walls of them, and houses in them, wherever they came:

and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled
it;
which they had taken out of the walls and houses they pulled down; or which they picked up in the highway, as they passed along, being a stony country; or which being laid in heaps, gathered out of the fields, they took and scattered them all over them:

and they stopped all the wells of water;
with stones and dirt:

and felled all the good trees;
fruit bearing ones; (See Gill on 2 Kings 3:19),

only in Kirharaseth left they the stones thereof;
not able to demolish it, it being a strong fortified city, the principal of the kingdom, and into which the king of Moab had thrown himself, and the remains of his forces; of which see ( Isaiah 16:7 Isaiah 16:10 ) ,

howbeit, the slingers went about it, and smote it;
smote the soldiers that appeared upon the walls of it; though Kimchi, and other Jewish writers, understand it of engineers, who cast out large stones from a sort of machines then in use, to batter down and break through the walls of cities.

2 Kings 3:25 In-Context

23 said, "That's blood! The kings must have quarreled, and their soldiers killed each other. Mo'av! To the plunder!"

24 When they arrived at the camp of Isra'el, Isra'el launched an attack, so that Mo'av fled before them. But they advanced on Mo'av and struck it.

25 They made ruins of the cities. Each man threw his stone on every good field, covering it. They stopped up all the wells. They chopped down all the good trees. Finally, all that remained was Kir-Hareset behind its stone wall, with the slingers surrounding and attacking it.

26 When the king of Mo'av saw that the fighting was too much for him, he took with him 700 men armed with swords and tried to break through to the king of Edom; but they couldn't do it.

27 Then he took his firstborn son, who was to have succeeded him as king, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. Following this, such great anger came upon Isra'el that they left him and went back to their own land.