2 Kings 3:25

25 The cities they overturned, and on every good piece of land everyone threw a stone, until it was covered; every spring of water they stopped up, and every good tree they felled. Only at Kir-hareseth did the stone walls remain, until the slingers surrounded and attacked it.

2 Kings 3:25 Meaning and Commentary

2 Kings 3:25

And they beat down the cities
Demolished the walls of them, and houses in them, wherever they came:

and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled
it;
which they had taken out of the walls and houses they pulled down; or which they picked up in the highway, as they passed along, being a stony country; or which being laid in heaps, gathered out of the fields, they took and scattered them all over them:

and they stopped all the wells of water;
with stones and dirt:

and felled all the good trees;
fruit bearing ones; (See Gill on 2 Kings 3:19),

only in Kirharaseth left they the stones thereof;
not able to demolish it, it being a strong fortified city, the principal of the kingdom, and into which the king of Moab had thrown himself, and the remains of his forces; of which see ( Isaiah 16:7 Isaiah 16:10 ) ,

howbeit, the slingers went about it, and smote it;
smote the soldiers that appeared upon the walls of it; though Kimchi, and other Jewish writers, understand it of engineers, who cast out large stones from a sort of machines then in use, to batter down and break through the walls of cities.

2 Kings 3:25 In-Context

23 They said, "This is blood; the kings must have fought together, and killed one another. Now then, Moab, to the spoil!"

24 But when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and attacked the Moabites, who fled before them; as they entered Moab they continued the attack.

25 The cities they overturned, and on every good piece of land everyone threw a stone, until it was covered; every spring of water they stopped up, and every good tree they felled. Only at Kir-hareseth did the stone walls remain, until the slingers surrounded and attacked it.

26 When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through, opposite the king of Edom; but they could not.

27 Then he took his firstborn son who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.