2 Kings 3:4

4 Now Mesa, king of Moab, nourished many sheep, and he paid to the king of Israel a hundred thousand lambs, and a hundred thousand rams, with their fleeces.

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 before the Lord, but not like his father and his mother: for he took away the statues of Baal, which his father had made.

3 Nevertheless, he stuck to the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, who made Israel to sin, nor did he depart from them.

4 Now Mesa, king of Moab, nourished many sheep, and he paid to the king of Israel a hundred thousand lambs, and a hundred thousand rams, with their fleeces.

5 And when Achab was dead, he broke the league which he had made with the king of Israel.

6 And king Joram went out that day from Samaria, and mustered all Israel.