Verse 16
REIGN OF MENAHEM, 2 Kings 15:16-22.
16. Smote Tiphsah Ewald, Thenius, and others, think this must have been a city in Palestine near Tirzah. But in the absence of any mention of a city of this name near Tirzah, it is better to understand the border city of Solomon’s kingdom, the Thapsacus of the Greeks, mentioned 1 Kings 4:24, where see note. Wordsworth well remarks: “In the state of confusion in which Israel was at this time, we need not be surprised that a restless and aspiring man, like Menahem, going forth from Tirzah, should have been able to carry his marauding and desolating conquests even to the banks of the Euphrates.”
The coasts thereof from Tirzah These words do not sufficiently authorize us to maintain that Menahem wasted all the land between Tirzah and Tiphsah, but they clearly show that his conquests were not confined to Tiphsah. We understand that he set out on his expedition from Tirzah, and no doubt many parts of the country between that place and the Euphrates suffered from his march.
Because they opened not The inhabitants of Tiphsah offered resistance to Menahem’s forces, and this so enraged him that he not only ravished the coasts thereof, but having taken the city, he perpetrated on its inhabitants, even to women and children, the most barbarous cruelties.
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