Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.
Ver. 16. Samaria shall become desolate] Here many begin the fourteenth chapter, but not so well; for this verse evidently cohereth with the former, and showeth that Ephraim shall not only be plundered, but butchered by the Assyrian by their own default. "Samaria shall become desolate," or be found guilty, rea peragetur, (as the Chaldee hath it, and the words may bear). How can she be otherwise, whereas
she hath rebelled against her God] She hath embittered him, or bitterly provoked him to wrath, as Hos 12:14 See Trapp on " Hos 12:14 " who therefore sent in the Assyrian to desolate her: "that bitter and hasty nation, to march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwellingplaces that were not theirs," Habakkuk 1:6. This was a bitter affliction, but behold a worse:
They shall fall by the sword] They shall lose not their land only, and the treasure of all their pleasant vessels, as Hosea 13:15, but their dearest lives, which to save a man will gladly part with all that he hath, Job 2:4, or submit to any servile employment, as the Gibeonites in Joshua's days did; who were willing to take hard on as slaves and underlings rather than to be cut off with the rest of the Canaanites.
Their infants shall be dashed in pieces] Sept. τα υποτιτθια αυτων, their sucklings, that are ordinarily spared for their innocence, ignorence, &c. See Hosea 10:14, with the note; and consider that infants are not so innocent (though they have yet done neither good nor evil) but that God may justly inflict upon them all torments here, and tortures in hell, for the guilt of original sin that cleaveth to their natures. Howbeit this excuseth not the barbarous cruelty of his executioners, who shall be surely and suitably punished, Psalms 137:8 .
And their women with child shall be ripped up] Of this kind of savage inhumanity, see Amos 1:13 2 Kings 8:12; 2 Kings 15:16, where you shall find that the tyrant Menahem ripped the infants of Tiphsah out of their mothers' bellies, because their fathers opened not the gates unto him. The like cruelty was exercised in the Sicilian Vespers and Parisian Massacre, by those Romish Edomites; maugre whose malice Ephraim is yet fruitful, the Church flourisheth.
Sanguine fundata est Ecclesia, sanguine crescit.
By blood the church is established, by blood she thrives.