All ye that are about him, bemoan him; and all ye that know his name, say, How is the strong staff broken, and the beautiful rod!
The Prophet seems indeed to exhort all neighbors to sympathy; but we have stated for what purpose he did this; for it was not his object to show that the Moabites deserved pity, so that their neighbors ought to have condoled with them in their calamities: but by this figurative mode of speaking he exaggerated the grievousness of the evils which were soon to happen...
The destruction is here further prophesied of very largely and with a great copiousness and variety of expression, and very pathetically and in moving language, designed not only to awaken them by a national repentance and reformation to prevent the trouble, or by a personal repentance and reformation to prepare for it, but to affect us with the calamitous state of human life, which is...
Commenting on Jeremiah 48:14-47
Thou daughter that dost inhabit Dibon,.... A city in Moab; See Gill on Isa 15:2. The Targum is, "O kingdom of the congregation of Dibon;'' but this was not a kingdom of itself, though a principal city in the kingdom of Moab: come down from thy glory, and sit in thirst; in a dry and thirsty land; in want of all the necessaries of life...