Therefore a battle roar will arise among your people, And all your fortresses will be destroyed, As Shalman destroyed Beth Arbel in the day of battle. The mother was dashed in pieces with her children.
It may be that, in the name “Betharbel,” the prophet alludes to the name “Bethel.” : As “Betharbel,” i. e., “the house,” or it may be the idolatrous “temple of Arbel,” rescued it not, but was rather the cause of its destruction, so shall Bethel. The holy places of Israel, the memorials of the free love of God to their forefathers, were pledges to “them,” the children of those forefathers, that, so long as they continued in the faith of their fathers, God the Unchangeable, would continue those same mercies to them. When they “turned” Bethel, “the house of God,” into Bethaven, “house of vanity,” then it became, like Betharbel, literally, “house of ambush of God,” the scene and occasion of their desolation.