Thus says Yahweh: "For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment; Because they have ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead, That they may enlarge their border.
They have ripped up the women with child in Gilead - Since Elisha prophesied that Hazael would be guilty of this same atrocity, and since Gilead was the scene of his chief atrocities , probably Syria and Ammon were, as of old, united against Israel in a war of extermination. It was a conspiracy to displace God’s people from the land which He had given them, and themselves to replace them. The plan was effective; it was, Amos says, executed. They expelled and “inherited Gad” Jeremiah 49:1. Gilead was desolated for the sins for which Hosea rebuked it; “blood had blood.” It had been “tracked with blood” (see the note at Hosea 6:8); now life was sought out for destruction, even in the mother’s womb. But, in the end, Israel, whose extermination Ammon devised and in part effected, survived. Ammon perished and left no memorial.