2 Chronicles 25:12

12 They took another 10,000 as prisoners, led them to the top of the Rock, and pushed them off a cliff. They all died in the fall, smashed on the rocks.

2 Chronicles 25:12 Meaning and Commentary

2 Chronicles 25:12

And other ten thousand left alive did the children of Judah
carry away captive
The rest of the army of the Edomites, which amounted to the same number, fell into their hands, and they took them, and carried them off:

and brought them unto the top of the rock;
very probably the same on which the city Petra, the metropolis of Edom, was built, called also Selah, ( 2 Kings 14:7 ) both which names signify a rock. Josephus ^F7 calls it the great rock in Arabia; that is, Arabia Petraea:

and cast them down from the top of the rock, that they were broken all
in pieces;
burst asunder, bones broken, and limb from limb separated. This sort of punishment was inflicted by the Romans on various malefactors, by casting them down from the Tarpeian rock ^F8; and in Greece, according to the Delphian law, such as were guilty of sacrilege were led to a rock, and cast down headlong from thence ^F9: and now in Turkey, at a place called Constantine, a town situated on the top of a great rock, the usual way of executing great criminals is by pushing them from off the cliff ^F11; see ( Luke 4:29 ) , but to use captives taken in war after this manner seems cruel and barbarous; and what should be the reason of such treatment of them is not easy to say.

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FOOTNOTES:

F7 Antiqu. l. 9. c. 9. sect. 1.
F8 Liv. Hist. l. 6. c. 20. Patercul. Hist. Roman. l. 2. Aurel. Victor. de Vir. Illustr. c. 27, 70. Vid, Rycquium de Capitol. Roman. c. 4. p. 45
F9 Aelian. Var. Hist. l. 11. c. 5.
F11 Pitt's Account of the Mahometans, ch. 1. p. 10.

2 Chronicles 25:12 In-Context

10 So Amaziah fired the soldiers he had hired from the north and sent them home. They were very angry at losing their jobs and went home seething.

11 But Amaziah was optimistic. He led his troops into the Valley of Salt and killed 10,000 men of Seir.

12 They took another 10,000 as prisoners, led them to the top of the Rock, and pushed them off a cliff. They all died in the fall, smashed on the rocks.

13 But the troops Amaziah had dismissed from his army, angry over their lost opportunity for plunder, rampaged through the towns of Judah all the way from Samaria to Beth Horon, killing 3,000 people and taking much plunder.

14 On his return from the destruction of the Edomites, Amaziah brought back the gods of the men of Seir and installed them as his own gods, worshiping them and burning incense to them.