2 Samuel 12:31

31. Put them under saws That is, as 1 Chronicles 20:3 explains it, cut them with saws. They were sawn asunder, as Isaiah is said to have been tortured. Hebrews 11:37. Shaw, in his Travels, describes a case of sawing asunder by placing the criminal between boards, and then beginning at the head. The above cut of ancient saws is from paintings found at Herculaneum.

Harrows of iron Rather, as the cognate Hebrew word is rendered in Amos 1:3, Threshing instruments of iron. The victims were probably made to lie down on the ground, as were the Moabites when David measured them with a line, (2 Samuel 8:2,) and a heavy threshing instrument, with jagged iron rollers underneath, was drawn over them.

Axes of iron For cut of ancient axes see on 1 Samuel 13:21. But it is not clear that the word מגזרות , which occurs here only, means axes. Keil renders it simply iron cutting tools, and we incline to believe with him that “the meaning cannot be more precisely determined.”

Made them pass through the brick-kiln Burned to death vast numbers of them by forcing them into the fires of brick-kilns. By these various instruments and methods of torture did David execute the captive Ammonites, thus retaliating upon them cruelties equivalent to what they themselves were accustomed to impose upon their captives. Many have cried out against these terrible cruelties, and thought it impossible that David could have been barbarous enough to authorize them. Hence has arisen another interpretation, which makes the text mean that David enslaved the people, and set them at sawing and hewing wood, making or using iron instruments, and burning brick. But this interpretation accords not well with the words, has the text in Chronicles decidedly against it, and is also open to the objection that the Hebrew people had little or no need of these kinds of labour. Their houses were of stone, or else simply tents, their iron instruments were comparatively few, and they certainly made no such use of wood as required so many sawyers and hewers as all these cities of the Ammonites afforded. But if we consider the customs of that age, and the barbarous character of these Ammonites, we will see the ground and reason of David’s severity. They were wont to rip up women with child, (Amos 1:13;) they would not covenant with the men of Jabesh except that they might thrust out all their right eyes, (1 Samuel 11:2,) and they had provoked this war by their most shameful treatment of David’s friendly ambassadors. 2 Samuel 10:4. If, then, it was proper barbarously to mutilate Adoni-bezek because he had thus mutilated other kings, (Judges 1:6-7,) and to hew Agag in pieces because his sword had made women childless, (1 Samuel 15:33,) and utterly destroy the idolatrous nations of Canaan, (Deuteronomy 7:2; Joshua 6:21; Joshua 8:25-26; 1 Samuel 15:3,) it is surely a strange inconsistency to cry out against this retaliatory severity of David, as if it were unparalleled and diabolical. The measure was strictly in accordance with the military customs of the age.