2 Kings 3:4

4 King Mesha of Moab raised sheep. [Each year] he had to pay the king of Israel 100,000 male lambs and the wool from 100,000 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 the LORD considered evil, but he didn't do what his father or mother had done. He put away the sacred stone that his father had set up and dedicated to Baal.

3 But he would not give up the sins that Jeroboam (Nebat's son) led Israel to commit. Joram would not turn away from those sins.

4 King Mesha of Moab raised sheep. [Each year] he had to pay the king of Israel 100,000 male lambs and the wool from 100,000 rams.

5 But when Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the [new] king of Israel.

6 King Joram immediately left Samaria to prepare Israel's army for war.