From the cry of Heshbon... — Elealeh (now El-Al) and Heshbon (now Hesbân) were about two miles apart. The panic-cry of the one city was echoed in the other; it reached even to Jahaz (see Note on Jeremiah 48:21), to the south-west of Heshbon.
From Zoar even unto Horonaim... — Both names represent the south district of Moab. In the “heifer of three years old” (see Isaiah 15:5) many critics find simply a proper name, “the third Eglath,” and conjecture that it was either one of three towns having the same name, or part of a tripolis or tripartite city, the other two members of which were Zoar and Horonaim. Nothing is known, however, of any town so constituted, and the epithet of the “third-year heifer,” i.e., a heifer not brought under the yoke, would be a suitable name enough for either Zoar or Horonaim, as a virgin fortress, as yet untaken by the foe. (Comp. Hosea 4:16; Hosea 10:11.)
The waters also of Nimrim shall be desolate. — Recent travellers, Seetzen and De Saulcy, have found a brook Nimrah, with a mass of ruins near it, near the southern extremity of the Dead Sea. The Nimrah of Numbers 32:3; Numbers 32:36; Josh. 14:27, is probably too far to the north. Tristram (Land of Israel, p. 54) identifies it with the Wady-Shaib near the fords of the Jordan, and possibly with the Bethabara of John 1:28.