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.
because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their border; this Hazael king of Syria did, according to Elisha's prophecy; and very likely the children of Ammon might join with him, inasmuch as they bordered on the countries which he smote, 2 Kings 8:12. This was an instance of shocking cruelty and inhumanity, to destroy at once the innocent and the impotent, though frequently done by enemies, 2 Kings 15:16. The reason of it was not only that they might possess their land, but keep it when they had got it; there being no heir to claim it, or molest them in the possession of it; see Jeremiah 49:1; though some read the words, "because they divided, or cleaved the mountain of Gilead" h; so Aben Ezra and Kimchi, though they mention the other sense: this they did to get into the land of Gilead, as Hannibal cut through the Alps; or rather to remove the borders of it, and lay it even with their own, and so enlarge theirs; which, as Kimchi says, was a very great iniquity, being one of the curses written in the law, Deuteronomy 27:17; thus one sin leads on to another. Some by "mountains" understand towers or fortified cities as Kimchi and Ben Melech observe; such as were built on mountains, which sense is approved by Gussetius i.