Had the Assyrian monarch thrown himself more seriously into the enterprise, and reappeared before the ramparts of the capital in the following year, refusing to leave it till he had annihilated its armies and rased its walls to the ground, then, no doubt, Israel, Judah, the Philistines, Edom, and Ammon, seeing it fully occupied in its own defence, might have forgotten the ruthless severity of Hazael, and have plucked up sufficient courage to struggle against the Damascene yoke; as it was, Bammân-nirâri did not return, and the princes who had, perhaps, for the moment, regarded him as a possible deliverer, did not venture on any concerted action. Joash, King of Judah, and Jehoahaz, King of Israel, continued to pay tribute till both their deaths, within a year of each other, Jehoahaz in 797 B.C., and Joash in 796, the first in his bed, the second by the hand of an assassin.*
* Kings xii. 20, 21, xiii. 9; cf. 2 Citron, xxiv. 22-26,
where the death of Joash is mentioned as one of the
consequences of the Syrian invasion, and as a punishment for
his crime in killing the sons of Jehoiada.
Their children, Jehoash in Israel, Amaziah in Judah, were, at first, like their parents, merely the instruments of Damascus; but before long, the conditions being favourable, they shook off their apathy and initiated a more vigorous policy, each in his own kingdom. Mari had been succeeded by a certain Ben-hadad, also a son of Hazael,* and possibly this change of kings was accompanied by one of those revolutions which had done so much to weaken Damascus: Jehoash rebelled and defeated Ben-hadad near Aphek and in three subsequent engagements, but he failed to make his nation completely independent, and the territory beyond Jordan still remained in the hands of the Syrians.** We are told that before embarking on this venture he went to consult the aged Elisha, then on his deathbed. He wept to see him in this extremity, and bending over him, cried out, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” The prophet bade him take bow and arrows and shoot from the window toward the East. The king did so, and Elisha said, “The Lord’s arrow of victory *** over Syria; for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek till thou have consumed them.”
* 2 Kings xiii. 24, 25. Winckler is of opinion that Mari and
Ben-hadad, son of Hazael, were one and the same person.
** 2 Kings xiii. 25, The term “saviour” in 2 Kings xiii. 5
is generally taken as referring to Joash: Winckler, however,
prefers to apply it to the King of Assyria. The biblical
text does not expressly state that Joash failed to win back
the districts of Gilead from the Syrians, but affirms that
he took from them the cities which Hazael “had taken out of
the hand of Jehoahaz, his father.” Ramah of Gilead and the
cities previously annexed by Jehoahaz must, therefore, have
remained in the hands of Ben-hadad.
*** [Heb. “salvation;” A.V. “deliverance.”—Tr.]
Then he went on: “Take the arrows,” and the king took them; then he said, “Smite upon the ground,” and the king smote thrice and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, “Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it, whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.” * Amaziah, on his side, had routed the Edomites in the Valley of Salt, one of David’s former battle-fields, and had captured their capital, Sela.** Elated by his success, he believed himself strong enough to break the tie of vassalage which bound him to Israel, and sent a challenge to Jehoash in Samaria. The latter, surprised at his audacity, replied in a parable, “The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife.” But “there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trode down the thistle. Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thine heart hath lifted thee up: glory thereof and abide at home; for why shouldest thou meddle to thy hurt that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with thee?” They met near Beth-shemesh, on the border of the Philistine lowlands. Amaziah was worsted in the engagement, and fell into the power of his rival. Jehoash entered Jerusalem and dismantled its walls for a space of four hundred cubits, “from the gate of Ephraim unto the corner gate;” he pillaged the Temple, as though it had been the abode, not of Jahveh, but of some pagan deity, insisted on receiving hostages before he would release his prisoner, and returned to Samaria, where he soon after died (781 B.C.).***
* 2 Kings xiii. 14-19.
** 2 Kings xiv. 7; cf. 2 Gliron. xxv. 11, 12. Sela was
rebuilt, and received the name of Joktheel from its Hebrew
masters. The subjection of the country was complete, for,
later on, the Hebrew chronicler tells of the conquest of
Elath by King Azariah, son of Amaziah (2 Kings xiv. 22).
*** 2 Kings xiv. 8-16. cf. 2 Ghron. xxv. 17-24.
Jeroboam II. completed that rehabilitation of Israel, of which his father had but sketched the outline; he maintained his suzerainty, first over Amaziah, and when the latter was assassinated at Lachish (764),* over his son, the young Azariah.** After the defeat of Ben-hadad near Aphek, Damascus declined still further in power, and Hadrach, suddenly emerging from obscurity, completely barred the valley of the Orontes against it. An expedition under Shalmaneser IV. in 773 seems to have precipitated it to a lower depth than it had ever reached before: Jeroboam was able to wrest from it, almost without a struggle, the cities which it had usurped in the days of Jehu, and Gilead was at last set free from a yoke which had oppressed it for more than a century. Tradition goes so far as to affirm that Israel reconquered the Bekaa, Hamath, and Damascus, those northern territories once possessed by David, and it is quite possible that its rivals, menaced from afar by Assyria and hard pressed at their own doors by Hadrach, may have resorted to one of those propitiatory overtures which eastern monarchs are only too ready to recognise as acts of submission. The lesser southern states, such as Ammon, the Bedâwin tribes of Hauran, and, at the opposite extremity of the kingdom, the Philistines,*** who had bowed themselves before Hazael in the days of his prosperity, now transferred their homage to Israel.
* 2 Kings xiv. 19, 20; cf. 2 Ghron. xxv. 27, 28.
** The Hebrew texts make no mention of this subjection of
Judah to Jeroboam II.; that it actually took place must,
however, be admitted, at any rate in so far as the first
half of the reign of Azariah is concerned, as a necessary
outcome of the events of the preceding reigns.
*** The conquests of Jeroboam II. are indicated very briefly
in 2 Kings xiv. 25-28: cf. Amos vi. 14, where the
expressions employed by the prophet imply that at the time
at which he wrote the whole of the ancient kingdom of David,
Judah included, was in the possession of Israel.
