2 Kings 8:12 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I know the evil thou wilt do unto the children of Israel It was not in Hazael's countenance that Elisha read what he would do; but God did at this time reveal it to him, and gave him such a clear and full view of it, that it greatly affected him. The sins of Israel provoked God to give them up into the hands of their cruel enemies: yet Elisha wept to think that ever Israelites should be so abused as he foresaw they would be by Hazael. For though he foretold, he did not desire, the woful day. Their strong holds wilt thou set on fire, &c. See what havoc and destruction war makes! what destruction sin makes! and how the nature of man is changed by the fall, and stripped even of humanity itself! Wilt dash their children That dashing young children against the stones was one piece of barbarous cruelty which the people of the East were apt to run into, in the prosecution of their wars, is plainly intimated Psalms 137:8-9. Nor was this inhuman practice out of use among nations pretending to more politeness; for, according to the remains of ancient fame, the Grecians, when they became masters of Troy, were so cruel as to throw Astyanax, Hector's son, a child in his mother's arms, headlong from one of the towers of the city. The ripping up of women with child is the highest degree of brutal cruelty; but there is reason to believe that Hazael, in his war with the Gileadites, (2 Kings 10:32-33,) verified this part of the prophet's prediction concerning him; for, what Amos, complaining of his cruelty to this people, calls thrashing Gilead with thrashing instruments of iron, both the Seventy and Arabic versions read, He sawed the pregnant women with iron saws. Le Clerc and Calmet.