Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Betharbel in the day of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.
Therefore shall a tumult - a tumultuous war.
Arise among thy people - literally, peoples: the war shall extend to the whole people of Israel, through all the tribes, and the peoples allied to her. Or the reference is to intestine divisions among themselves: no longer were they united as one people, but were peoples disunited; and out of this anarchy arose the successive usurpers.
All thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Beth-arbel - i:e., Shalmaneser, a compound name, in which the part common to it with the names of three other Assyrian kings is omitted; Tiglath-pileser, Esar-haddon, Shar-ezer. So Jeconiah is abbreviated to Coniah. Arbel was situated in Naphtali in Galilee, in the middle of the valley of Jezreel, on the border nearest Assyria; against it Shalmaneser, at his first invasion of Israel (2 Kings 17:3), vented his chief rage. Thus Hosea lived to see the fulfillment of his earlier prophecy, "I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel" (Hosea 1:5). 'Hoshea then became Shalmaneser's servant, and gave him presents.' God threatens Israel's fortresses with the same fate as Arbel suffered "in the day (on the occasion) of the battle," then well known, though not mentioned elsewhere (cf. 2 Kings 18:34). This event, close on the reign of Hezekiah, shows the inscription of Hosea (Hosea 1:1) to be correct. 'When they turned Bethel, the house of God, into Beth-aven, the house of vanity, then it became, like Beth-arbel-literally, house of ambush of God-the scene and occasion of their desolation' (Pusey).