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In his days: this is here added,
1. As a character of the time, and an instance of the truth and certainty of Divine predictions and comminations, this being fulfilled eight hundred years after it was threatened; and withal, as a warning to the Israelites, not to think themselves innocent or safe, because the judgment threatened against them by Ahijah, 1Ki_14:15, was not yet executed, though they continued in that calf-worship which he condemned; but to expect the certain accomplishment of it in due time, if they persisted in their impenitency. Or,
2. As an evidence of the horrible corruption of his times, and of that high contempt of God which then reigned.
Hiel the Beth-elite; who lived in Beth-el, the seat and sink of idolatry, wherewith he was thoroughly leavened.
Built Jericho; a place seated in the tribe of Benjamin, but belonging to the kingdom of Israel; which place he seems to have chosen for his buildings; not so much for his own advantage as out of a contempt of the true God, and of his threatenings, which he designed to convince of falsehood by his own experience; and out of an ambitious desire to. advance his own reputation and interest thereby, by attempting that which he knew his king and queen too would be highly pleased with.
He laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub; i.e. in the beginning of his building God took away his first-born, and others successively in the progress of the work, and the youngest when he finished it. And so he found by his own sad experience the truth of God’s word, and how vain it was to contend with him.
Quest. Why did not God rather punish Hiel himself?
Answ. This was a terrible punishment, to see his children cut off by Divine vengeance before their time, one after another; and all this for his own folly and rashness. Compare Jer_52:10. And as for Hiel himself, possibly after he had been spared so long, that he might be an eyewitness of his sons untimely deaths, he also might be cut off, though it be not recorded, as not belonging to the prophecy here mentioned; or if not, his present impunity was his greatest misery; either as it continued his torment in the sad and lasting remembrance of his loss and misery; or as it was a mean to harden his heart so for greater judgments, to which he was reserved.
According to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua; of which See Poole "Jos_6:26".