2 Kings 8:12 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And will dash their children, &c.— 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 quite 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, ch. Exodus 10:32-33 verified this part of the prophet's prediction concerning him; for what Amos, complaining of his cruelty to this people, calls threshing Gilead with threshing-instruments of iron, both the LXX and Arabic versions read, He sawed the big-bellied women with iron saws. Le Clerc and Calmet.