2 KINGS 15:16 — KING JAMES VERSION 0 0
“Then Menahem smote Tiphsah, and all that were therein, and the coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him, therefore he smote it; and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up.”
At that time Menahem sacked Tiphsah, all who were in it and its territory from Tirzah onward; because they did not open to him, he sacked it. He ripped open all the pregnant women in it — Menahem's brutality toward Tiphsah (תִּפְסַח, *Tiphsach*), a city that refused to recognize his rule, reaches the depths of ancient Near Eastern warfare atrocity. The ripping open of pregnant women (וַיִּקְרַע אֶת־כָּל־הֶהָרוֹת, *way-yiqra et-kol-he-harot*) echoes the severest OT condemnations of foreign cruelty (Amos 1:13) and represents not merely military conquest but systematic terror. This brutality, recorded without explicit moral judgment in 2 Kings, will be evaluated theologically in Hosea as symptomatic of Israel's moral collapse. Menahem's cruelty reflects the spiritual degradation that characterizes Israel's final decades.
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