41 Kerioth
41 the cities shall be taken and the strongholds seized. The heart of the warriors of Moab shall be in that day like the heart of a woman in her birth pains;
41 The towns will be captured, the fortresses taken. Brave warriors will double up in pain, helpless to fight, like a woman giving birth to a baby.
41 Kerioth is taken, And the strongholds are surprised; The mighty men's hearts in Moab on that day shall be Like the heart of a woman in birth pangs.
41 Its cities will fall, and its strongholds will be seized. Even the mightiest warriors will be in anguish like a woman in labor.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Jeremiah 48:41
Commentary on Jeremiah 48:14-47
(Read Jeremiah 48:14-47)
The destruction of Moab is further prophesied, to awaken them by national repentance and reformation to prevent the trouble, or by a personal repentance and reformation to prepare for it. In reading this long roll of threatenings, and mediating on the terror, it will be of more use to us to keep in view the power of God's anger and the terror of his judgments, and to have our hearts possessed with a holy awe of God and of his wrath, than to search into all the figures and expressions here used. Yet it is not perpetual destruction. The chapter ends with a promise of their return out of captivity in the latter days. Even with Moabites God will not contend for ever, nor be always wroth. The Jews refer it to the days of the Messiah; then the captives of the Gentiles, under the yoke of sin and Satan, shall be brought back by Divine grace, which shall make them free indeed.