Amos 2:1

Thus says the LORD:

"For three transgressions of Moab,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,
because he burned to lime
the bones of the king of Edom.

Up to this point, the people of Israel are delighted with Amos’ message. God is to judge and punish all their enemies. But now comes the shock. Amos declares God’s judgment on his own people, Judah and Israel. Judah’s sins are not those of brutality or bloodshed. Her guilt lies in her rejection of God’s law and her preference for worshipping pagan gods. For this she will be conquered by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 bc, and led captive to Babylon.


In ancient times much importance was placed on a dead man’s body being peacefully placed in the family burial site, so that he could be “gathered to his fathers” and find rest in the grave. To rob, disturb, or desecrate a grave was an offense of the highest order. Many surviving tomb inscriptions utter violent curses against anyone who would commit such an outrage (G.A. Cooke, A Textbook of North-Semitic Inscriptions. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1903, pp. 26-7, 30-2; Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 327). Moab, in a war against Edom (perhaps the incident referred to in 2 Kings 3:26-27), drove their opponents back to their own territory, opened the royal graves, and burned, as if to lime, the bones of Edom’s king. This sacrilege was so thorough that bone ashes became as fine and white as powdered chalk.

2:1 Moab. Descendants of Lot and his elder daughter (Gen. 19:37). burned the bones. This event, where vengeance didn’t stop at death, is not recorded elsewhere in Scripture.