What is the significance of Moab in the Bible?

Son of Lot and his eldest daughter; his descendants; and the land which they inhabited. Gen. 19:37. No account is given of Moab personally. The territory of his descendants was on the east of the Salt Sea. When the tribe of Reuben obtained their possession, their boundary on the south was the river Arnon, which river was the northern boundary of the Moabites, for they had been driven south by the Amorites before the arrival of Israel. Num. 21:11-30. When the Israelites approached the promised land they were directed not to distress nor contend with Moab, Deut. 2:9, so they passed to the east of them. The Moabites were however filled with terror when they heard that the Amorites had been smitten, and Balak their king hired Balaam to curse Israel. Balaam was compelled by God to bless them instead of cursing them, but he gave to Balak the fatal advice to try to weaken them by seductive alliances (which would cause them to fall under the Lord's discipline), and this, alas, was only too successful: cf. Rev. 2:14. It was in a valley in the land of Moab that Moses was secretly buried. Deut. 34:6.

In the time of the judges God used Eglon king of Moab to punish Israel, and they served the Moabites eighteen years; but when they cried unto the Lord, He delivered them, and ten thousand of the Moabites were slain. Judges 3:12-30. The relations of Israel with the Moabites were varied. In the prophecy of Isaiah 16 Moab is characteristic of the world in which outcast Israel is hidden: Elimelech and Naomi fled thither from the famine, and David, when Saul was persecuting him, entrusted to their king his father and mother. During his subsequent reign David defeated them and made them tributary. 1 Sam. 22:3-4; 2 Sam. 8:2; 1 Chr. 18:2.

In the time of Jehoshaphat the children of Moab, Ammon and mount Seir attacked Judah, but God made the battle His own and caused them to attack one another. 2 Chr. 20:1-23. During Ahab's reign they were again tributary, but at his death they threw off their allegiance, but were completely subdued by the united forces of Israel, Judah and Edom. In desperation the king of Moab offered up his eldest son as a sacrifice. 2 Kings 3:4-27. They revived to some extent, but were again subdued by Nebuchadnezzar. Jer. 27:1-11.

The two sister-nations, Moab and Ammon, are known as "the children of Lot" (Deut. 2:9), and are of incestuous origination (Gen. 19:37-38). They have always been inveterate and implacable enemies of God's elect nation, and they are included in the coming great confederacy of nations which will be formed under the revived Assyrian power to destroy the children of Israel and blot out their very name from the earth (see the prophecy in Psalm 83:4-8).

Moab displayed this enmity against Israel on the way from Egypt to Canaan. When the travelling people reached the plains of Moab (Num. 22:1), Balak the king hired Balaam to effect their destruction by his curses (Joshua 24:9-10). This scheme failing through divine guardianship, other means of injury were adopted on the advice of the wicked prophet. The people were induced "to join themselves" to Baal-Peor and to indulge in the lascivious rites of the gods of Moab, thousands of the people dying from the plague that followed. This was a dark page in Israel's history, to which there are many allusions in the admonitions of scripture (Num. 31:16; Num. 25:1-5; Deut. 4:3; Ps. 106:28-30; Hosea 9:10; 1 Cor. 10:8; Rev. 2:14).

First of all, the oppressors came from Moab. We learn from many passages who Moab was and of his descendants. He had a very sad beginning. Moab, the son of Lot, was born as a result of a sinful act (Gen.19:30-38) and all down through the history of his descendants there was the exhibition of the same kind of evil features in opposition to God.

In Numbers 22 Balak the king of Moab hired Balaam, the false prophet, to curse the people of God. There Balak was being true to his parentage, he was being true to that evil beginning, he was exhibiting those evil features of opposition to God and to God's people. When we come to Numbers 25 we find that the daughters of Moab were a snare to the sons of Israel and through fornication and idolatry they brought terrible sin and it's evil consequences into the nation of Israel. They, too, were true to their parentage. We find that God gave a very definite commandment against Moab; in Deuteronomy 23:3 God says that a Moabite or an Ammonite was not to come into the congregation of the Lord for ever, this was God's command against the Moabites.

The unparalleled success of Israel against the Amorites, startled, as we know, the nations across the river, making their hearts melt, and depriving them of any more spirit (Joshua 2:10-11). No wonder therefore that Balak, king of Moab, when he saw his nation's old antagonist and victor, Sihon the Amorite, had been helpless before Israel, and he and all his people swept off the earth - no wonder that Balak was convinced of the impossibility of Moab successfully contending with Israel, unless God could be brought to be against them. Hence in conjunction with Midian he hired Balaam to curse them, but without success. God was for Israel, so none could be against them. The people irresistible in war, yielded, however, to the seduction of the Midianitish women and, though not a man fell in battle against the Amorites, twenty and four thousand died by the plague inflicted by God in the matter of Baal-peor. God's wrath was turned away at that time by the faithfulness of Phineas but the tribe of Simeon for many a day bore testimony to what had gone on, in the reduction of its numbers by upwards of thirty-seven thousand, as ascertained at the second census when compared with the first (Num. 26:14).

But these enemies went further. There was not mere neglect but also open hostility. Many centuries after Moses' day Jehovah said, "O My people, remember now what Balak King of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim to Gilgal, that ye may know the righteousness of Jehovah" (Micah 6:5). A great question was thus raised by Balak and Balaam under the instigation of Satan against the people of Israel, a question which it is important we should understand, for it affects us intimately. Satan is as full of malignity against God's heavenly saints as against his earthly people. Israel was delivered from Egypt by the power of God, with promises of blessing in a divinely chosen land ringing in their ears; their path, year by year, was marked by divine love and care; the people were now on the threshold of the promised land; and the moment had almost come for them to cross the Jordan and take possession. Satan, who had wrought havoc amongst them persistently during the wilderness years, now roused himself for a supreme effort against them, Balak and Balaam being his chosen instruments. He sought to deprive them of the promised blessings; indeed, he desired their utter extermination. Had the great question been raised at the beginning of the forty years everyone would have expected Jehovah to refuse the suggestion to destroy the people. Why deliver them from the taskmasters of Egypt, and why preserve them from the perils of the Red Sea if He was willing to destroy them? But the question was not raised at the beginning of the forty years, but at the end. And what was the history of those years? On Jehovah's part, goodness, faithfulness and patience; but on the people's part unbelief, ingratitude and persistent disobedience! Moses truly loved the people and sacrificed all his worldly prospects in order to serve them, but they broke his heart, and on one occasion they so provoked his spirit that he uttered words which deprived him of the land of his soul's deep desire (Isa. 56:32-33; Num. 20:12; Deut. 4:21-22). With such a record, could the people be cursed? Could Jehovah be induced to cast Israel aside? This was the question that was raised and answered in the plains of Moab.

The successes given to the children of Israel alarmed some of their neighbours, more particularly Moab; and this gives occasion for a striking episode in the history which brought to issue as solemn a question as any raised in the book of Numbers. The sending for Balaam on the part of Balak was an altogether new element. We have had the grace of God and His provisions for the people; we have had the unbelief of the people, with chastenings and judgments, not without the renewed declarations on God's part of His surely bringing even such a people into the goodly land. Grace alone could, but grace would do it.

Israel's offer to pass through the land of the Amorites on the king's highway, without drinking of the waters of the well, was refused by Sihon their king, who "gathered all his people together … and fought against Israel" (Num. 21:21-23). This was the undoing of Sihon and his people, for Israel utterly defeated them, taking possession of their land from "Arnon unto Jabbok, even unto the children of Ammon" (Num. 21:24). Heshbon, the city of Sihon, once belonged to Moab, but Israel did not take it from Moab but from the Amorites. About three hundred years after this, Jephthah quoted this to the king of the children of Ammon, when he claimed, as belonging to Ammon, the land that Israel had taken from Sihon, king of the Amorites (Judges 11:12-27). Og, king of Bashan, like Sihon, king of the Amorites, was delivered into Israel's hand by Jehovah, and Israel took possession of his land.

When Balak, the king of Moab, saw "all that Israel had done to the Amorites … Moab was sore afraid of the people". There was really no need for Moab to fear Israel, for God was not giving the inheritance of the children of Esau or that of the children of Lot to Israel (Deut. 2:5, 9, 19). The enmity towards God's people was not on account of anything that Israel had done, or threatened to do, to Moab. Nor does it appear that Balak expected any attack from Israel, for he said to the elders of Midian, "Now shall this company lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field" (Num. 22:4). Moab did not relish the thought of having God's people as their neighbours, and they wanted to get rid of them.

Moab, as we know, was a blood relation of Israel. He was descended from Lot, who was a relative of Abraham. So that the Moabites were the natural kinsmen of the Israelites. But, as we have already seen, Lot's relation with Abraham was largely a carnal, fleshly one. In his descendants' case it was entirely a fleshly one. Israel had no more bitter and relentless foes than these Moabites and Ammonites, who were their kinsmen.

Yet Lot delivered is nevertheless but half delivered; and here again we learn how the blessed written word sets forth in great facts the moral judgment of God before the time came to speak with unmistakeable plainness. We had seen sorrowful enough results in the case of Noah, who, drinking of the fruit of the vine to the dishonour of himself, pronounced a curse on a branch of his posterity, though not without a blessing on the rest. It was a curse not causeless but just: nevertheless what a sorrowful thing for a parent's heart to utter! So here with Lot, delivered of angels from the worst of associations, even after his deliverance by Abraham, brought out again, but as it were maimed and wounded, to be yet more dishonoured. It would be painful if it were needful to say a word of that which follows. Yet was it not without moral profit for Israel to remember the source of a perpetual thorn in their side — the shameful origin of the Moabite and the Ammonite, two nations, neighbours and akin, notorious for continual envy and enmity against the people of God. The only God marks all in His wisdom. Sin then as now produced a harvest, large and long-continued, if sovereign grace in some cases forbids that it should be a perpetual harvest of misery to those who indulged in it. "He that sows to the flesh," no matter who or where or when, "shall of the flesh reap corruption."

Moab is the very picture of self-satisfied, self-indulgent religion such as is seen in Laodicea, "I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing" (Rev. 3:17). "Moab has been at ease from his youth; he had settled on his dregs, and has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, nor has he gone into captivity. Therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent has not changed" (Jer. 48:11).