2 Kings 3:4

4 Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder, and he used to deliver to the king of Israel a hundred thousand male lambs and a hundred thousand wool rams.

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.

---

FOOTNOTES:

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

2 Kings 3:4 In-Context

2 and did evil in the eyes of Yahweh, yet not as his father or his mother, as he removed the stone pillars of Baal that his father had made.

3 But he did cling to the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin, and he did not depart from it.

4 Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder, and he used to deliver to the king of Israel a hundred thousand male lambs and a hundred thousand wool rams.

5 It happened that when Ahab died, Mesha king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

6 So King Joram went out on that day from Samaria, and he mustered all of Israel.