Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God. Others translate shall atone, i.e. bear guilt or punishment. In the latter sense it is from אָשֵם, to atone or suffer the punishment of contracted guilt; in the former sense it is from שָׁמְם, and it is translated accordingly by ἀφανισθηδεταῖ in the LXX; and pereat by Jerome; so also Aben Ezra: "It shall be laid waste;" Kimchi: "The aleph has seh'wa alone, and the signification 'desolation,' and so the dwellers therein shall be made desolate." He thus intimates that aleph, having sch'wa alone without seghol, does not belong to the root, which is not אשם (for its future would be תֶּאֱשׁם), but שָׁמַם. Rashi, however, understands it in the sense of "atone," or "find out her guiltiness;" he says, "From now will her guilt manifest itself." The reason of Samaria being thus mentioned is not only that it was the capital of the northern kingdom, but, as Kimchi says, "it confirmed Israel in the worship of the calves; for if the kings had been good, they would have brought back Israel to what was good." The ki assigns the reason of Samaria's desolation or guilt; it was rebellion against Jehovah, for Samaria was the seat and center of idolatry, and hence it spread throughout the land. They shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. The destruction thus described was to be complete. The present population would perish by the sword; the future progeny would be extinguished and all posterity cut off. Not only the children already born, but those unborn, were devoted to destruction; and all this in the most savage and barbarous manner. The word עוֹלֵל presents childhood on the side of playfulness or petulance. The pronominal suffix attached to הרי refers to the city; and the feminine noun itself, forming subject to verbs in the masculine, arises from the fact that the feminine of the imperfect plural becomes rarer; or because the feminine plural only gradually distinguishes itself by a peculiar form from the masculine. The cruelties here specified may have been occasioned by those of the same kind with which Menahem King of Samaria smote Tiphsah. On that occasion "all the women therein that were with child he ripped up" (compare, for the cruel practice, 'Iliad,' 6.58;,2 Kings 8:12 and 2 Kings 15:16).
HOMILETICS