2 Kings 3:4

4 Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder, ^[a] and he would render to the king of Israel a hundred thousand lambs and the wool of a hundred thousand 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.

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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 as his father and mother had done. He removed the sacred pillar of Baal that his father had made.

3 Nevertheless, he clung to the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit; he did not turn away from them.

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

5 But after the death of Ahab, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

6 So at that time King Jehoram set out from Samaria and mobilized all Israel.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or sheepherder