Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.
Then he took his eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering, х Waya`ªleehuw (H5927) `olaah (H5930)] - and offered an ascension offering. The most natural way of understanding this act is, that it was done by Mesha, king of Moab, who immolated his own son to Chemesh, the tutelary deity of his kingdom. And so Josephus regarded it ('Antiquities,' b. 9:, ch. 3:, sec. 2). [The Septuagint, however, has: kai elabe ton huion autou ton proototokon, took his oldest (first-born) son, not heautou (G1438) (his own), but autou (G847) (his); i:e., the king of Edom's son, who had been captured during the siege, and whose life was to be sacrificed in the most cruel manner, in revenge for the union of Edom with the allied assailants of Moab.] This is the opinion of Theodoret and several modern scholars, who further refer 'the great indignation against Israel' to Edom, who was unwillingly dragged into the war as a tributary of Judah, and thereby suffered the calamitous loss of the king's son. The former view, however-namely, that which regards Mesha as offering his son for a burnt offering upon the wall-appears to be the most obvious. It was done in accordance with the fierce fanaticism of the Moabite nation; and if, as Michaelis thinks, this act is referred to, Amos 2:1, the king seems to have carried his vindictive feelings beyond the grave, and through the impulse of implacable enmity, to have violated the sanctity of the tomb, by raising the corpse of the king of Edom for posthumous dishonour on a funeral pile.
They departed from him, and returned to their own land. By this deed of horror to which the allied army drove the king of Moab, a divine judgment came upon Israel-that is, the besiegers feared the anger of God, which they had incurred, by giving occasion to the human sacrifice forbidden in the law (Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:3), and hastily raised the siege, and dispersing, returned to their respective countries. In order to convey an idea of the real import of this act of the king of Moab, it is necessary to observe that it was not only intended as a sacrifice of propitiation to the cruel gods of his country, but a murder in terrorem hostium, the memory of which would haunt and blast them in all time coming.
Sanchoniathon relates it as a custom among the ancient Rephaim, when their country was on the verge of being ruined by the ravages of war, to bring out, with the national consent, the heir-presumptive to the throne, adorned in all the insignia of rovalty, and in presence of the assembled chiefs, offer him as a substitutionary victim, to propitiate the gods. The Moabites, who succeeded to the land, inherited also the social as well as religious usages of the Emim (Rephaim), and this malignant superstition among others, as the incident recorded in the text clearly proves. But this act, besides being a propitiatory sacrifice to Chemosh, was intended at the same time to appall the enemy, by a horrid scene, the sight of which, if allowed by their hostile persistence to be enacted, would have a baneful influence on the life and prosperity of all who witnessed it. Judging from the traditional usages of the Brahmins in India, the prevalence of such an idea is of ancient date; and the whole circumstances of the transaction, as narrated in this passage, show that the object was to horror-strike the enemy. Not only did the king of Moab prepare to offer his son on the wall, i:e., publicly, but the whole process-the youthful and richly-attired victim, the wood, the fire, the bloody knife - all were designed to deter them from prosecuting the siege; and if it had not that effect, then the crimson tide, the dark column of smoke from the burnt offering, would show that the spirit of the substitute had fled, and his manes would trouble, terrify, and pursue each one of them through life.
This view affords a natural explanation of a difficulty which appears insoluble in any other way-namely, the cause of the great indignation against Israel, of the sudden termination of the siege, and of the hasty return of the allies to their homes. For on the hypothesis above stated, the king of Moab not only offered this sacrifice as a means of imploring the interposition of his gods, but of terrifying his enemies; and that the sight of his public preparations for the solemn offering of a human sacrifice did produce such an appalling effect, through the deep and wide spread influence of Phoenician superstition in Edom, in Israel, and perhaps to some extent in Judah also, is evident from the fact that, hastily breaking up their camp, they "departed from him, and returned to their own land."