Let us go up against Judah, and vex it,.... By besieging or distressing it; or "stir it up" to war, as Jarchi interprets it:and let us make a breach therein for us; in the walls of the city of Jerusalem, and enter in at it; the Targum is,"let us join, and put it to us;''and so Jarchi, let us level it with us, as this valley, which is even: the sense may be, let us make a breach and division among them, and then part the kingdom between us ; or if we cannot agree on that, let us set up a king of our own, as follows:and set a king in the midst of it, [even] the son of Tabeal; which Jarchi, by a situation of the alphabet the Jews call "albam", makes it to be the same with Remala, that is, Remaliah; and so supposes, that the intention was to set Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, over Judah; but it is not reasonable to think that the king of Syria should join in such a design; and besides, the method of interpretation, Aben Ezra says, is mere vanity; and whose sense of the words is much preferable, taking Tabeal to be the name of some great prince, either of Israel or of Syria; and so Kimchi thinks that he was a man of the children of Ephraim, whom they thought to make king in Jerusalem.
The Targum understands not any particular person, but anyone that should be thought proper; and paraphrases it thus,"let us appoint a king in the midst of it, who is right for us,''or pleases us; the name seems to be Syriac, see Ezr 4:7.
Dr. Lightfoot thinks it is the same with Tabrimmon, the name of some famous family in Syria. One signifies "good God": and the other "good Rimmon", which was the name of the idol of the Syrians, 2Ki 5:18.
So Noldius, Elr. Concord. Part. p. 62.