And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.
The line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab. Captives doomed to destruction were sometimes grouped together, and marked off by means of a measuring line and plummet (2 Samuel 8:2; Isaiah 34:11; Amos 7:7); so that "the line of Samaria" means the line drawn for the destruction of Samaria; "the plummet of the house of Ahab," for exterminating his apostate family; and the import of the threatening declaration here is, that Judah would be overthrown, as Samaria and the dynasty of Ahab had been.
I will wipe Jerusalem ... The same doom is denounced more strongly in a figure unmistakeably significant. This doom of utter and universal extermination, which was threatened against Judah, was averted by repentance, at least to a certain extent, inasmuch as a large portion of Judah was restored from the Babylonian captivity. But it was executed on the kingdom of Israel, which, as the sin of its people had been over a longer duration and of a more aggravated character, was more severely punished. The turning of a disk upside down implies the complete emptying of all its contents; and accordingly many writers maintain that not a single Israelite was left (cf. Jeremiah 7:15), and that the Samaritan colonists were pagan foreigners (see the notes at 2 Kings 17:6-24; also, Winer, 'Realworterbuch,' article, 'Samaritaner').