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:
Thus saith the Lord. Here begins a series of threatenings of vengeance against six other states, followed by one against Judah, and ending with one against Israel, with whom the rest of the prophecy is occupied. The eight predictions are in symmetrical stanzas, each prefaced by "Thus saith the Lord." Beginning with the sin of others, which Israel would be ready enough to recognize, he proceeds to bring home to Israel her own guilt. Israel must not think hereafter, because she sees others visited similarly to herself, that such judgments are matters of chance; nay, they are divinely foreseen and foreordered, and are confirmations of the truth that God will not clear the guilty. If God spares not the nations that know not the truth, how much less Israel that sins willfully (Luke 12:47-48; James 4:17).
For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof - if Damascus had only sinned once or twice, I would have spared them, but since, after having been so often pardoned, they still persevere so continually, I will no longer "turn away" their punishment. The Hebrew is simply, 'I will not reverse it,' namely, the sentence of punishment which follows: the negative expression implies more than it expresses - i:e., 'I will most surely execute it;' God's fulfillment of His threats being more awful than human language can express. The suppression of what it is that He 'will not reverse,' is more awful than, if it were expressed in full. 'Three and four' imply sin multiplied on sin. Compare Exodus 20:5, 'of God's deliverances of His people;' Proverbs 30:15, "There are three things that are never satisfied, yea four things say not, It is enough;" Proverbs 30:18; Proverbs 30:21; "six and seven," Job 5:19; "once and twice," of God's speaking to man, yet man not perceiving it, Job 33:14 - `twice and thrice,' margin; "oftentimes," the English version: Job 33:29; "Give a portion to seven, and also to eight," Ecclesiastes 11:2. There may be also a reference to seven, the product of three and four added; seven expressing the full completion of the measure of their guilt (Leviticus 26:18; Leviticus 26:21; Leviticus 26:24: cf. Matthew 23:32).
Because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron. The very term used of the Syrian king Hazael's oppression of Israel under Jehu and Jehoahaz (2 Kings 10:32-33; 2 Kings 13:7). Jerome describes the threshing instrument as a sort of wain, rolling on iron wheels set with teeth, so that it both threshed out the grain, and bruised and cut in pieces the straw, as food for cattle, for lack of hay. The victims were thrown before the threshing sledges, the teeth of which tore their bodies. So David did to Ammon (2 Samuel 12:31: cf. Isaiah 28:27).