2 Kings 3:4

4 Now Moab's King Mesha kept sheep. He would pay Israel's king one hundred thousand lambs and the wool from one 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 He did what was evil in the LORD's eyes, but he wasn't as bad as his father and mother. He removed the sacred pillar of Baal that his father had made.

3 But he nevertheless clung to the sins that Jeroboam, Nebat's son, had caused Israel to commit. He didn't deviate from them.

4 Now Moab's King Mesha kept sheep. He would pay Israel's king one hundred thousand lambs and the wool from one hundred thousand rams.

5 But when Ahab died, Moab's king rebelled against Israel's king.

6 So King Joram set out from Samaria at once. He prepared all Israel for war.