‘ So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest for eighty years.'
The Moabites no longer came to cause trouble to Israel, for they were busy with the succession and had lost a good number of their finest troops. They also recognised that something had happened to restore the strength of Israel, so that they were no longer a sitting target.
The eighty year rest is twice the previous forty year rest, just as the subjugation had been for eighteen years rather than eight. It represents forty intensified. God was showing double favour to His people. There was a double waiting and a double period of testing, and two generations of rest from the Moabites. In reading Judges we can tend to overlook these long periods of wellbeing. But they occurred non-the-less.
The subjugation by Moab may well have partly taken place while the subjugation of the other tribes under Cushan-rishathaim was going on and through part of their period of rest, for this was in another part of Israel and had probably been limited to the three tribes.
Perhaps Moab had stopped at Jericho because they did not want to face the army of Cushan-rishathaim, for tribute rendered those who paid it the right to protection, and thus Israel would have had a right of protection.
We note also that the next major crisis took place when Ehud was dead (Judges 4:1). And meanwhile Shamgar was active against the Philistines in the west (Judges 3:31). This suggests a shorter period than ‘eighty years'. But that was surely because those events took place in another part of Israel, mainly in the plains in the west where chariots were effective. Jericho and Transjordan in the east were unaffected. Their rest from war continued for two generations.