And other ten thousand left alive did the children of Judah carry away captive,.... The rest of the army of the Edomites, which amounted to the same number, fell into their hands, and they took them, and carried them off:and brought them unto the top of the rock; very probably the same on which the city Petra, the metropolis of Edom, was built, called also Selah, 2Ki 14:7 both which names signify a rock.
Josephus calls it the great rock in Arabia; that is, Arabia Petraea:and cast them down from the top of the rock, that they were broken all in pieces; burst asunder, bones broken, and limb from limb separated.
This sort of punishment was inflicted by the Romans on various malefactors, by casting them down from the Tarpeian rock ; and in Greece, according to the Delphian law, such as were guilty of sacrilege were led to a rock, and cast down headlong from thence : and now in Turkey, at a place called Constantine, a town situated on the top of a great rock, the usual way of executing great criminals is by pushing them from off the cliff ; see Lu 4:29, but to use captives taken in war after this manner seems cruel and barbarous; and what should be the reason of such treatment of them is not easy to say.
Antiqu. l. 9. c. 9. sect. 1. Liv. Hist. l. 6. c. 20. Patercul. Hist. Roman. l. 2. Aurel. Victor. de Vir. Illustr. c. 27, 70. Vid, Rycquium de Capitol. Roman. c. 4. p. 45, &c. Aelian. Var. Hist. l. 11.
c. 5. Pitt's Account of the Mahometans, ch. 1. p.