And Adonibezek said
To the men of Judah, after his thumbs and toes were cut off, his
conscience accusing him for what he had done to others, and being
obliged to acknowledge he was righteously dealt with:
threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their
great toes cut
off;
that is, by him, or by his orders, whom he had conquered and made
captives; according to Josephus F7, they were seventy two; the
number may be accounted for by observing, that in those times, as
appears by the preceding book, every city had a king over it; and
besides, these seventy kings might not be such who had had the
government of so many cities, but many of them such who had
reigned successively in the same city, and had fallen into the
hands of this cruel and tyrannical king, one after another, and
their sons also with them might be so called: and these he says
gathered [their meat] under my table:
were glad to eat of the crumbs and scraps which fell from thence,
and might in their turns be put there at times for his sport and
pleasure, and there be fed with the offal of his meat, as Bajazet
the Turk was served by Tamerlane, who put him into an iron cage,
and carried him about in it, and used him as his footstool to
mount his horse, and at times fed him like a dog with crumbs from
his table F8:
as I have done, so God hath requited me;
whether he had any knowledge of the true God, and of his justice
in dealing with him according to his deserts, and had a real
sense of his sin, and true repentance for it, is not certain;
since the word for God is in the plural number, and sometimes
used of Heathen deities, as it may be here by him; however, the
righteous judgment of God clearly appears in this instance:
and they brought him to Jerusalem;
to that part of Jerusalem which belonged to the tribe of Judah;
see ( Joshua
15:8 Joshua 15:63
) ; here they brought him alive, and dying, buried him, as
Josephus F9 says; which might be their view in
carrying him thither, perceiving he was a dying man; or they had
him thither to expose him as a trophy of victory, and as an
example of divine justice:
and there he died:
whether through grief and vexation, or of the wounds he had
received, or by the immediate hand of God, or by the hands of the
Israelites, is not said; neither are improbable.