Bible Strands
Jeremiah 48:42
Moab will be destroyed as a nation because he vaunted himself against the LORD.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Yahweh speaks through Jeremiah to the nation of Moab during a prophetic oracle of impending military collapse. This declaration follows the capture of Kirioth and the seizure of Moab’s fortified cities.
The words — הִגְדִּֽיל (hig.Dil) translates literally to "it has magnified itself," standing in direct causal sequence to וְ/נִשְׁמַ֥ד (ve./nish.Mad), "it will be destroyed." These roots establish Moab's self-exaltation as the precise trigger for its national erasure.
The thread — The pattern of pride provoking divine judgment runs through Jeremiah 48:2, where Heshbon plots Moab's removal from nationhood, and Isaiah 37:23, where lifted eyes and taunted voices are recorded as acts of defiance. Both passages link national ambition directly to prophetic condemnation.
Why it lands — The text requires acknowledgment that political endurance cannot outlast deliberate defiance against divine authority. It demands readers treat pride not as cultural strength but as a structural liability that guarantees collapse.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And Moab shall be destroyed from being a people, because he hath magnified himself against the Lord.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 48:2 There is no longer praise for Moab; in Heshbon they devise evil against her: ‘Come, let us cut her off from nationhood.’ You too, O people of Madmen, will be silenced; the sword will pursue you.
- Isaiah 7:8 For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered as a people.
- Isaiah 37:23 Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!
- Jeremiah 30:11 For I am with you to save you, declares the LORD. Though I will completely destroy all the nations to which I have scattered you, I will not completely destroy you. Yet I will discipline you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished.”
- Jeremiah 48:26 “Make him drunk, because he has magnified himself against the LORD; so Moab will wallow in his own vomit, and he will also become a laughingstock.
- Esther 3:8 Then Haman informed King Xerxes, “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples of every province of your kingdom. Their laws are different from everyone else’s, and they do not obey the king’s laws. So it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them.
- Psalms 83:4 saying, “Come, let us erase them as a nation; may the name of Israel be remembered no more.”
- Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
- Daniel 11:36 Then the king will do as he pleases and will exalt and magnify himself above every god, and he will speak monstrous things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been decreed must be accomplished.
- Matthew 7:2 For with the same judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.