Publish in the palaces at Ashdod, and in the palaces in the
land of Egypt
This is spoken to the prophets, to publish and declare in all the courts of the Philistines and Egyptians, and among all the princes and great men therein, the sins of the people of Israel, and the punishment God threatened them with; and let them, even these very Heathens, judge whether there was not a just proportion between them, and whether their sins did not deserve such calamities to be brought upon them, the Lord by his prophets had denounced; and say, assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria;
the metropolis of the ten tribes, ( Isaiah 7:9 ) ; and which was built upon a mountain, and several others were about it, and joined to it; where these princes of Ashdod or Azotus in Palestine, and of Egypt, are called to leave their courts, and meet together, to behold the iniquities committed by Israel, and to sit in judgment upon them, and declare their sense of what was just and fitting to be done to such a people: and behold the great tumults in the midst thereof;
the riots of its inhabitants, the noise of the mob committing all manner of outrages and wickedness: and the oppressed in the midst thereof;
the poor, the fatherless, and the widow, injured in their persons and properties, plundered of their substance, or defrauded of it.