2 Kings 3:4

4 And Mesha, king of Moab, was a pastor and rendered unto the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs and one hundred thousand rams, with the wool.

2 Kings 3:4 Meaning and Commentary

2 Kings 3:4

And Mesha king of Moab was a sheep master
With which his country abounded; he kept great numbers of them, and shepherds to take care of them; he traded in them, and got great riches by them; his substance chiefly consisted in them:

and rendered unto the king of Israel:
either as a present, or as an annual tribute:

an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams, with the wool;
that is, upon them, unshorn, and so the more valuable; and it was usual for tributary nations to pay their tribute to those to whom they were subject in such commodities which they most abounded with; so the Cappadocians, as Strabo ^F3 relates, used to pay, as a tribute to the Persians, every year, 1500 horses and 2000 mules, and five myriads of sheep, or 50,000; and formerly, Pliny ^F4 says, the only tribute was from the pastures.

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FOOTNOTES:

F3 Geograph. l. 11. p. 362.
F4 Nat. Hist. l. 18. c. 3.

2 Kings 3:4 In-Context

2 And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, but not like his father and like his mother, for he put away the images of Baal that his father had made.

3 Nevertheless, he cleaved unto the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin; he did not depart from them.

4 And Mesha, king of Moab, was a pastor and rendered unto the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs and one hundred thousand rams, with the wool.

5 But it came to pass, when Ahab was dead, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

6 And King Jehoram went out of Samaria the same time and numbered all Israel.