Jeremiah 49 - Introduction

To the north of the Moabites lay the country of the Ammonites, a closely allied nation Genesis 19:37 who claimed that the land assigned to the tribe of Gad had originally belonged to them Judges 11:13. They seem to have been far less civilized than the Moabites, and possessed but one stronghold, Rabbah, not devoting themselves to agriculture, but wandering with their flocks over the Arabian wastes. When, however, Tiglath-Pileser carried the inhabitants of Gilead into captivity, the Ammonites occupied much of the vacant land, and many of them probably adopted a more settled life; at this time they even possessed Heshbon, once the frontier town between Reuben and Gad. It is this seizure of the territory of Gad which forms the starting-point of Jeremiah’s prediction. Older prophecies against Ammon are Amos 1:13; Zephaniah 2:8.