Happy [shall he be] that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. That takes the infants from their mothers' breasts, or out of their arms, and dashes out their brains against a "rock", as the word signifies; which, though it may seem a piece of cruelty, was but a just retaliation; the Babylonians having done the same to the Jewish children, and is foretold elsewhere should be done to theirs, Isa 13:16.
Nor is this desired from a spirit of revenge, but for the glory of divine justice, and that such a generation of cruel creatures might be rooted out of the earth; see Re 2:2. Some allegorically understand this of crushing and mortifying the first motions of sin in the heart; but such a sense seems to have no place here.
elo la "ad petram", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, &c. "ad repem", Cocceius.