[490]. 1 Chron. xix. 18. In 2 Sam. x. 18, the numbers are 700 charioteers and 40,000 horsemen, which are clearly wrong.
[491]. The account of the war with Zobah given above is the most probable that can be gleaned from the scanty and fragmentary notices that have been preserved to us. But it must be remembered that it is probable only. It is not even certain that ‘the Syrians that were beyond the river’ (2 Sam. x. 16) were not the Aramæans of Damascus rather than those of Mesopotamia, since, as Professor Hommel has shown (Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, pp. 195 sqq.) the term Ebir Nâri, ‘Beyond the river,’ is already used in an Assyrian poem (K. 3500, l. 9) of the age of David, in the Assyro-Babylonian sense of the country westward of the Euphrates. Indeed, Professor Hommel suggests that it already denoted the country westward of the Jordan. This, however, is inconsistent with 2 Sam. x. 17; and west of the Jordan, moreover, there were no Aramæan kingdoms.
[492]. The Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 8) has preserved the true form of the name of Tibhath, which has been corrupted into Betah in 2 Sam. viii. 8. It is the Tubikhi of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the Dbkhu of the geographical list of Thothmes III. (No. 6). Instead of Berothai the Chronicler has Chun.
[493]. 1 Chron. xviii. 8.
[494]. Hadoram, the older form of the name, is found only in 1 Chron. xviii. 10. The text of the books of Samuel has the Hebraised Joram.
[495]. Salamanu appears as Shalman in Hos. x. 14, as Sulmanu in Assyro-Babylonian. Sulmanu was the god of Peace, like Selamanês in a Greek inscription from Shêkh Barakât in northern Syria, whose name is also found in a Phœnician inscription from Sidon (Clermont-Ganneau, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études CXIII., vol. ii. pp. 40, 48).
[496]. This is usually supposed to mean that they were tortured in various ways, but more probably it means only that they were made public slaves and compelled to cut and saw wood, harrow the ground, and make bricks. At all events, if tortures are referred to, no parallel to them can be found elsewhere. As the crown is said to have weighed ‘a talent’ it can hardly have been worn by an earthly king.
[497]. 2 Sam. viii. 13. In 1 Chron. xviii. 12, however, the victory is ascribed to Abishai, the brother of Joab.
[498]. 2 Sam. viii. 13, where the mention of ‘the valley of salt’ shows that we must read ‘Edom’ instead of ‘Aram,’ as indeed is done by the Chronicler as well as in the superscription of Ps. lx. and in the Septuagint. The ‘valley of salt’ was part of the Melukhkha or ‘Saltland’ of the cuneiform inscriptions.
[499]. 2 Sam. xxiii. 37, 36, 34.