Ver. 1. For three transgressions, &c.] Or malicious wickedness with a high hand committed, and heaped up to that height. See Amos 1:3. Because he burnt the bones of the king of Edom] “A wicked man,” but yet a man: and God (who is a lover of mankind, φιλανθρωπος) shows himself sensible of the injuries and indignities done but to his dead body; such an enemy he is to cruelty to his creatures. That Mesha, king of Moab, bore a special edge against the king of Edom, sought to break through the army to him, but could not, and afterwards sacrificed his son and heir, whom he had taken in that sally made upon the king of Edom’s quarters, we read, 2 Kings 3:26,27. There are some that think that at another time, overcoming the Edomites, he dug up the bones of that king out of his sepulchre, he burnt them to lime, that is, prorsus, perfectissime et absolutissime, as some sense it (Targum), to ashes and cinders, as Isaiah 33:12, or (for greater revenge and contempt) he white-limed the walls of his palace therewith, as Genesis 11:3 Ps 69:23 Isa 22:12. Thus, in that horrid massacre of Paris, they cut off the admiral’s head (whom before they had murdered) and presented it to the Queen’s mother; who, embalming it, sent it for a present to the Pope, who, thereupon, caused the massacre to be pictured in the Vatican hall; under one side is Colignii et sociorum caedes; Colignii and his allies slaugher, on the other, Rex Colignii caedem probat The King of the Coligni approves the slaughter. (II Mercurio Italico, 92). The king himself (viz. Charles IX) beholding the bloody bodies of those then massacred, and feeding his eye on so woeful a spectacle, breathed out this bloody speech, Quam bonus est odor hostis mortui: How sweet is the smell of a slain enemy. Another hell hag said upon a like occasion, that she never beheld so goodly a piece of tapestry as the faces of those butchered saints. This insulting over the dead is that piece of cruelty which the Church complaineth of, Psalms 79:2. Cornelius a Lapide, upon this text, cries out of it as an inhuman and shameful thing, both because the honour of sepulchre is the last dues of the dead (τα νομιζομενα, iusta defunctorum); and also because this is to fight with dead carcases. Yet this hath been practised by one Pope against another, and by many of the Pope’s champions here in England, who unburied and burnt the bodies of Paulus Phagius, Peter Martyr’s wife, and many others. Cardinal Wolsey had a purpose (had he not been prevented by death) to have taken up King Henry’s body at Windsor, and to have burnt it. How much better Charles V (yet no friend to the Reformation, but a prudent prince), who, entering Wittenberg as a conqueror, and being importuned to dig up the dead bodies of Luther and other reformers, refused to violate their graves, and sent away Melancthon, Pomeran, and some other eminent preachers, unhurt, not so much as once forbidding them to publish openly the doctrine that they professed! Cambyses heareth ill among all men for his digging up the dead body of Amasis, king of Egypt, and causing it to be whipped and bricked; and Sulla, for the like cruelty to Gaius Marius. Of all fowl we most hate and detest the crows; and of all beasts the jackals (a kind of foxes in Barbary), because the one digs up the graves and devours the flesh, and the other picks out the eyes of the dead. Hinc moraliter disce, saith a Lapide: learn hence also what a baseness it is to tear and deface the good names of those that are dead; to secretly corrrupt their names is worse than to burn their bones to lime. And yet among many other men of mark that might be instanced, Melancthon mortuus tantum non ut blasphemus in Deum cruci affigitur, saith Zanchius; not Papists, but Lutherans laid blasphemy to his charge after his death, whom all Christendom worthily honoured for his learning and piety.
Ver. 2. But I will send a fire] See Amos 1:4. And it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth] A city so fair and large that it hath a plural name, which signifieth cities by way of excellence; as Athens was called the Greece of Greece; Rome, the epitome of the world. ‘Ελλας ελλαδος επιτομη της οικουμενης. And Moab shall die with tumult] With all these together, on a huddle, as it were: they are here set down by an elegant asyndeton, to set forth the suddenness and terror of the judgment threatened. They shall be stormed, and have no quarter given them. Here Osiander noteth, that it is one of the many punishments of sin for a man not to die in his bed, but in battle. It was promised to Josiah “he should die in peace,” 2 Chronicles 34:28. True it is he died in battle; but he died before that general desolation that followed shortly after (for, indeed, with him died all the prosperity of that people). And beside, his weeping and humiliation had altered the very nature of the trouble, and made war to be peace to him.
Ver. 3. And I will cut off the judge] i.e. the king, who sometimes sits himself in judgment, as King Henry VIII did here, at the condemnation of Lambert, martyr; as the king of Persia doth often to this day. I have seen him (saith a traveller) many times to alight from his horse, only to do justice to a poor body. The Grand Seignior himself sits one day in the week to receive the poor’s petitions, and punish the faulty grandees about him. For as he styles himself, Awlem Penawh, that is, the world’s refuge; so he would have the world to take notice, that such as lament unto him shall be sure to have redress and succour from him, although his ministers fail them, or abuse them, through their injustice; hence few viziers die in their beds. From the midst thereof] i.e. of Kerioth, the chief city where the court was kept, as Kimchi saith, with a great deal of pomp and pride. We have heard of the pride of Moab. See Jeremiah 48:7,11,14,18 Zep 2:8,10. It was their national sin, and forerunner of their fall.