2 Kings 3 · a question people ask
Whose "great wrath" was it in 3:27?
The verse reads, "Then he took his oldest son who would have reigned in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. There was great wrath against Israel; and they departed from him, and returned to their own land" (3:27). It doesn't say whose wrath it was, or what the wrath had to do with Israel's going home. The word is qetsef, which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "wrath" (tap wrath). This is its only use in 2 Kings. Christians agree on what the verse says and on what it leaves unsaid. They read the wrath in two main ways, each resting on verses. The chapter gives no reason for the wrath on either reading, and these notes supply none.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
The LORD's wrath
Those who hold this view note that qetsef is used of the LORD's wrath: "wrath has gone out from the LORD!" (Numbers 16:46). They point to 2 Chronicles 32:25, "Therefore there was wrath on him, Judah, and Jerusalem", where, as in 3:27, the Hebrew says only that there was wrath on someone, and the next verse calls it "the LORD’s wrath" (2 Chronicles 32:26). They read "great wrath against Israel" (3:27) the same way, as the LORD's.
Numbers 16:46 · 2 Chronicles 32:25-26 · 2 Kings 3:27
Moab's fury
Those who hold this view note that 3:27 doesn't name the LORD, and that qetsef is also used of people's wrath: "This will cause much contempt and wrath" (Esther 1:18), and of a man who "is frustrated, and has sickness and wrath" (Ecclesiastes 5:17). The verse before tells how hard the battle had gone for Moab (3:26). They read "great wrath against Israel" as fury against Israel after what the king of Moab did on the wall, and Israel's going home (3:27) as the result.
2 Kings 3:26-27 · Esther 1:18 · Ecclesiastes 5:17
The verses
“When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too severe for him, he took with him seven hundred men who drew a sword, to break through to the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his oldest son who would have reigned in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. There was great wrath against Israel; and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.”