Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away [the punishment] thereof; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron:
Ver. 3. For three transgressions of Damascus and for four] For their seven, that is, several sins, not a few; for their many and bony provocations, for their progress in sin, without mean or measure. The Jews here note, that for three faults God will pardon a man, but let him beware of the fourth: God will not always serve man for a sinning stock, but break off his abused patience, and proceed to punishment. Lo, all these things worketh God twice and thrice with man, Job 33:29, but let him not thereupon grow overly bold, lest he pay for his presumption. Sin iterated is greatly aggravated; as ciphers added increase the sum; and though it may sleep a long time, yet it is but a sleeping debt, not called for of many years, required at length; as Saul's sin in slaying the Gibeonites was not punished till forty years after; as Joab's killing of Abner slept all David's days. Now, lest Israel, looking upon Syria yet flourishing, should promise themselves like impunity, they are here thus threatened.
I will not turn away the punishment thereof] But pay them home for the new and the old; yea, for the old by occasion of the new; for their obstinate and incurable wickedness, I will punish them seven times more, and seven times more, and seven to that, Leviticus 26:24, and so hang them up, as it were, in gibbets, for a warning to Israel, that they may wash their feet in the blood of these heathens, and redeem their own sorrows.
Because they have threshed Gilead] i.e. the Gileadites whom they had taken captive, and thus cruelly intreated; see 2 Kings 13:7; 2 Kings 10:32, where it appeareth, that all this was done not without the Lord; which yet is no excuse to Hazael's cruelty. That conquerors were wont to use this kind of torment and punishment, see 2 Samuel 12:31. But that David should do so, is some wonder: he was hardly recovered of his late foul fall; and thence, haply, so much harshness. Certain it is, that the merciful God abhorreth cruelty toward his creature, and severely punisheth it; such as was this of Hazael toward Israel, foretold by Elisha, 2 Kings 8:12, and afterwards of Ptolemy Lathurus, king of Egypt, who slew 30,000 Jews at once; and forced the rest to eat up their dead carcases. (Joseph.) So that barbarous Duke of Alva roasted some of his prisoners to death, starved others, and that even after quarter, saying, though he promised to give them their lives, he did not promise to find them food. Dio telleth us of the Jews that dwelt about Cyrene in the days of Trajan; that they slaughtered a great sort of Romans and Greeks after a miserable manner; sawing them down the middle from the crown of the head, tearing their flesh with their teeth, smearing themselves with their blood, and wearing their skins for coverings, &c., so that 220,000 people perished there; and besides, in Egypt and Cyprus, 240,000, by the like abhorred cruelty, and about the same time, by the same hands. Dio, In Vitae Trajan, l. 58. c. 75. 8:421,423 "Beware of men," Matthew 10:17 .