[480]. This must be the general signification of the Hebrew expression Metheg-ammah in 2 Sam. viii. i., which the Septuagint translates τὴν ἀφωρισμένην, ‘the tribute.’ The Chronicler read Gath for Metheg (1 Chron. xviii. 1), and consequently understood ammah in the sense of ‘mother-city.’ My own belief is that we have in the phrase a Hebrew transcription of a Babylonian expression which has been derived from a cuneiform document. The Babylonian mêtêg ammati (for mêtêq ammati) would signify ‘the highroad of the mainland’ of Palestine, and would refer to the command of the highroad of trade which passed through Canaan from Asia to Egypt and Arabia. Ammati is the Semitic equivalent of the Sumerian Sarsar (W. A. I. v. 18, 32 c.), which was an early Babylonian name of the land of the Amorites or Syria (W. A. I. ii. 51, 19; see Records of the Past, new ser., v. p. 107); and mêtêq is given as a rendering of kharran, ‘a highroad’ (W. A. I. ii. 38, 26).
[481]. 2 Sam. xxiii. 20.
[482]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, p. 367.
[483]. Ibid. pp. 349, 350.
[484]. The Septuagint has misread ‘Amalek’ for ‘Maacah.’
[485]. El-Hîba probably stands on the site of the Egyptian town of Hâ-Bennu, the Greek Hipponon, the capital of the eighteenth nome of Upper Egypt, and its fortifications were built by the high priest Men-kheper-Ra and his wife Isis-em-Kheb. The Tanite Pharaohs formed the twenty-first dynasty.
[486]. See Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies, pp. 279-280. Assur-bani-pal states that he sent his troops against the cities of Azar-el, the Khiratâqazians, Edom, Yabrudu, Bit-Ammani or Ammon, ‘the district of the city of the Haurân’ (Khaurina), Moab, Sakharri, Khargê, and ‘the district of the city of Tsubitê, or Zobah.’ Delitzsch identifies Yabrudu with the Yabruda of Ptolemy, the modern Yabrûd, north-east of Damascus. In the tribute-lists of the Second Assyrian Empire, Tsubitê or Tsubutu comes between Dûru (Tantûra) and Hamath, Samalla (Sinjerli) and Khatarikka or Hadrach (Zech. ix. 1.), and Zemar (Sumra), and the Quê on the coast of the Gulf of Antioch.
[487]. The fact that the Assyrian king Shalmaneser II. calls Baasha, the contemporary king of Ammon, ‘the son of Rukhubi’ or Rehob, just as he calls Jehu ‘the son of Omri,’ shows that Rehob was a personal name. The Biblical Beth-Rehob is parallel to Bit-Omri, a designation of Samaria in the Assyrian texts. Beth-Rehob is placed near Dan in Judg. xviii. 28. In 1 Chron. xix. 6, Aram-Naharaim is apparently substituted for Aram-Beth-Rehob, though, as the dominions of Hadad-ezer extended to the Euphrates, soldiers may have come to the help of the Ammonites from Mesopotamia, as well as from Beth-Rehob. The name of Hadad-ezer is incorrectly given as Hadar-ezer in 2 Sam. x. 16. It appears as Hadad-idri in the Assyrian inscriptions (with the Aramaic change of z to d), where it is the name of the king of Damascus, called Ben-Hadad II. in the Old Testament.
[488]. So, according to the Septuagint and 1 Chron. xviii. 4. The Hebrew text of 2 Sam. viii. 4 has ‘700 horsemen.’ But it is possible that we ought to read ‘1700 horsemen.’
[489]. Nicolaus Damascenus, as quoted by Josephus, makes Hadad the king of Damascus, who thus vainly endeavoured to check the torrent of Israelitish success. Hadad, however, must be merely Hadad-ezer in an abbreviated form, Perhaps we may gather from 1 Kings xi. 23, that the ruling prince in Damascus at the time of David’s conquests was Rezon, the son of Eliadah.