Discouraged, doubtless, by so many fruitless attempts, he decided to suspend hostilities, at all events for the present. In 845 B.C. he visited Naîri, and caused an “image of his royal Majesty” to be carved at the source of the Tigris close to the very spot where the stream first rises. Pushing forward through the defiles of Tunibuni, he next invaded Urartu, and devastated it as far as the sources of the Euphrates; on reaching these he purified his arms in the virgin spring, and offered a sacrifice to the gods. On his return to the frontier, the chief of Dayaini “embraced his feet,” and presented him with some thoroughbred horses. In 844 B.C. he crossed the Lower Zab and plunged into the heart of Namri; this country had long been under Babylonian influence, and its princes bore Semitic names. Mardukmudammiq, who was then its ruler, betook himself to the mountains to preserve his life; but his treasures, idols, and troops were carried off to Assyria, and he was superseded on the throne by Ianzu, the son of Khambân, a noble of Cossæan origin. As might be expected after such severe exertions, Shalmaneser apparently felt that he deserved a time of repose, for his chroniclers merely note the date of 843 B.C. as that of an inspection, terminating in a felling of cedars in the Amanos. As a fact, there was nothing stirring on the frontier. Chaldæa itself looked upon him as a benefactor, almost as a suzerain, and by its position between Elam and Assyria, protected the latter from any quarrel with Susa. The nations on the east continued to pay their tribute without coercion, and Namri, which alone entertained pretensions to independence, had just received a severe lesson. Urartu had not acknowledged the supremacy of Assur, but it had suffered in the last invasion, and Aramê had shown no further sign of hostility. The tribes of the Upper Tigris—Kummukh and Adini—accepted their position as subjects, and any trouble arising in that quarter was treated as merely an ebullition of local dissatisfaction, and was promptly crushed. The Khâti were exhausted by the systematic destruction of their towns and their harvests. Lastly, of the principalities of the Amanos, Gurgum, Samalla, and the Patina, if some had occasionally taken part in the struggles for independence, the others had always remained faithful in the performance of their duties as vassals. Damascus alone held out, and the valour with which she had endured all the attacks made on her showed no signs of abatement; unless any internal disturbance arose to diminish her strength, she was likely to be able to resist the growing power of Assyria for a long time to come. It was at the very time when her supremacy appeared to be thus firmly established that a revolution broke out, the effects of which soon undid the work of the preceding two or three generations. Ben-hadad, disembarrassed of Shalmaneser, desired to profit by the respite thus gained to make a final reckoning with the Israelites. It would appear that their fortune had been on the wane ever since the heroic death of Ahab. Immediately after the disaster at Eamoth, the Moabites had risen against Ahaziah,* and their king, Mesha, son of Kamoshgad, had seized the territory north of the Arnon which belonged to the tribe of Gad; he had either killed or carried away the Jewish population in order to colonise the district with Moabites, and he had then fortified most of the towns, beginning with Dhibon, his capital. Owing to the shortness of his reign, Ahaziah had been unable to take measures to hinder him; but Joram, as soon as he was firmly seated on the throne, made every effort to regain possession of his province, and claimed the help of his ally or vassal Jehoshaphat.**
* 2 Kings iii. 5. The text does not name Ahaziah, and it
might be concluded that the revolt took place under Joram;
the expression employed by the Hebrew writer, however,
“when Ahab was dead... the King of Moab rebelled against the
King of Israel,” does not permit of it being placed
otherwise than at the opening of Ahaziah’s reign.
** 2 Kings iii. 6, 7, where Jehoshaphat replies to Joram in
the same terms which he had used to Ahab. The chronological
difficulties induced Ed. Meyer to replace the name of
Jehoshaphat in this passage by that of his son Jehoram. As
Stade has remarked, the presence of two kings both bearing
the name of Jehoram in the same campaign against Moab would
have been one of those facts which strike the popular
imagination, and would not have been forgotten; if the
Hebrew author has connected the Moabite war with the name of
Jehoshaphat, it is because his sources of information
furnished him with that king’s name.
The latter had done his best to repair the losses caused by the war with Syria. Being Lord of Edom, he had been tempted to follow the example of Solomon, and the deputy who commanded in his name had constructed a vessel * at Ezion-geber “to go to Ophir for gold;” but the vessel was wrecked before quitting the port, and the disaster was regarded by the king as a punishment from Jahveh, for when Ahaziah suggested that the enterprise should be renewed at their joint expense, he refused the offer.** But the sudden insurrection of Moab threatened him as much as it did Joram, and he gladly acceded to the latter’s appeal for help.
* [Both in the Hebrew and the Septuagint the ships are in
the plural number in 1 Kings xxii. 48, 49.—Tr.]
** 1 Kings xxii. 48, 49, where the Hebrew writer calls the
vessel constructed by Jehoshaphat a “ship of Tarshish;”
that is, a vessel built to make long voyages. The author of
the Chronicles thought that the Jewish expedition to Ezion-
geber on the Red Sea was destined to go to Tarshish in
Spain. He has, moreover, transformed the vessel into a
fleet, and has associated Ahaziah in the enterprise,
contrary to the testimony of the Book of Kings; finally, he
has introduced into the account a prophet named Eliezer, who
represents the disaster as a chastisement for the alliance
with Ahaziah (2 Ghron. xx. 35-37).
Apparently the simplest way of approaching the enemy would have been from the north, choosing Gilead as a base of operations; but the line of fortresses constructed by Mesha at this vulnerable point of his frontier was so formidable, that the allies resolved to attack from the south after passing the lower extremity of the Dead Sea. They marched for seven days in an arid desert, digging wells as they proceeded for the necessary supply of water. Mesha awaited them with his hastily assembled troops on the confines of the cultivated land; the allies routed him and blockaded him within his city of Kir-hareseth.* Closely beset, and despairing of any help from man, he had recourse to the last resource which religion provided for his salvation; taking his firstborn son, he offered him to Chemosh, and burnt him on the city wall in sight of the besiegers. The Israelites knew what obligations this sacrifice entailed upon the Moabite god, and the succour which he would be constrained to give to his devotees in consequence. They therefore raised the siege and disbanded in all directions.** Mesha, delivered at the very moment that his cause seemed hopeless, dedicated a stele in the temple of Dhibôn, on which he recorded his victories and related what measures he had taken to protect his people.***
* Kir-Hareseth or Kir-Moab is the present Kcrak, the Krak of
mediaeval times.
** The account of the campaign (2 Kings iii. 8-27) belongs
to the prophetic cycle of Elisha, and seems to give merely a
popular version of the event. A king of Edom is mentioned
(9-10, 12-13), while elsewhere, under Jehoshaphat, it is
stated “there was no king in Edom” (1 Kings xxii. 47); the
geography also of the route taken by the expedition is
somewhat confused. Finally, the account of the siege of Kir-
hareseth is mutilated, and the compiler has abridged the
episode of the human sacrifice, as being too conducive to
the honour of Chemosh and to the dishonour of Jahveh. The
main facts of the account are correct, but the details are
not clear, and do not all bear the stamp of veracity.
*** This is the famous Moabite Stone or stele of Dhibôn,
discovered by Clermont-Ganneau in 1868, and now preserved in
the Louvre.
He still feared a repetition of the invasion, but this misfortune was spared him; Jehoshaphat was gathered to his fathers,* and his Edomite subjects revolted on receiving the news of his death. Jeho—his son and successor, at once took up arms to bring them to a sense of their duty; but they surrounded his camp, and it was with difficulty that he cut his way through their ranks and escaped during the night.
* The date of the death of Jehoshaphat may be fixed as 849
or 848 B.C. The biblical documents give us for the period of
the history of Judah following on the death of Ahab: First,
eight years of Jehoshaphat, from the 17th year of his reign
(1 Kings xxii. 51) to his 25th (and last) year (1 Kings
xxii. 42); secondly, eight years of Jehoram, son of
Jehoshaphat (2 Kings viii. 17); thirdly, one year of
Ahaziah, son of Jehoram (2 Kings viii. 26)—in all 17 years,
which must be reduced and condensed into the period between
853 B.C., the probable date of the battle of Ramoth, and
843, the equally probable date of the accession of Jehu. The
reigns of the two Ahaziahs are too short to be further
abridged; we must therefore place the campaign against Moab
at the earliest in 850, during the months which followed the
accession of Joram of Israel, and lengthen Johoshaphat’s
reign from 850 to 849. There will then be room between 849
and 844 for five years (instead of eight) for the reign of
Jehoram of Judah.
The defection of the old Canaanite city of Libnah followed quickly on this reverse,* and Jehoram was powerless to avenge himself on it, the Philistines and the Bedâwin having threatened the western part of his territory and raided the country.** In the midst of these calamities Judah had no leisure to take further measures against Mesha, and Israel itself had suffered too severe a blow to attempt retaliation. The advanced age of Ben-hadad, and the unsatisfactory result of the campaigns against Shalmaneser, had furnished Joram with an occasion for a rupture with Damascus. War dragged on for some time apparently, till the tide of fortune turned against Joram, and, like his father Ahab in similar circumstances, he shut himself within Samaria, where the false alarm of an Egyptian or Hittite invasion produced a panic in the Syrian camp, and restored the fortunes of the Israelitish king.***
* 2 Kings viii. 20-22; cf. 2 Ghron. xxi. 8-10.
** This war is mentioned only in 2 Ghron. xxi. 16, 17, where
it is represented as a chastisement from Jahveh; the
Philistines and “the Arabs which are beside the Ethiopians”
(Kush) seem to have taken Jerusalem, pillaged the palace,
and carried away the wives and children of the king into
captivity, “so that there was never a son left him, save
Jehoahaz (Ahaziah), the youngest of his sons.”
*** Kuenen has proposed to take the whole account of the
reign of Joram, son of Ahab, and transfer it to that of
Jehoahaz, son of Jehu, and this theory has been approved by
several recent critics and historians. On the other hand,
some have desired to connect it with the account of the
siege of Samaria in Ahab’s reign. I fail to see any
reasonable argument which can be brought against the
authenticity of the main fact, whatever opinion may be held
with regard to the details of the biblical narrative.