Northern Syria was thus again incorporated with the empire, but Urartu, although deprived of the resources with which Syria had supplied it, continued to give cause for apprehension; in 739 B.C., however, a large proportion of the districts of Naîri, to which it still clung, was wrested from it, and a fortress was built at Ulluba, with a view to providing a stable base of operations at this point on the northern frontier. A rebellion, instigated, it may be, by his own agents, recalled Tiglath-pileser to the Amanus in the year 738. The petty kings who shared with Assyria the possession of the mountains and plains of the Afrîn could not succeed in living at peace with one another, and every now and then their disputes broke out into open warfare. Samalla was at that time subject to a family of which the first members known to history, Qaral and Panammu, shared Yaudi equally between them. Barzur, son of Panammu I., had reigned there since about 765 B.C., and there can be little doubt that he must have passed through the same vicissitudes as his neighbours; faithful to Urartu as long as Sharduris kept the upper hand, and to Assyria as soon as Tiglath-pileser had humiliated Urartu, he had been killed in a skirmish by some rival. His son, Panammu IL, came to the throne merely as a nominee of his suzerain, and seems to have always rendered him faithful service; unfortunately, Yaudi was no longer subject to the house of Panammu, but obeyed the rule of a certain Azriyahu, who chafed at the presence of an alien power.*
* Azriyahu of Yaudi was identified with Azariah of Judah by
G. Smith, and this identification was for a long time
accepted without question by most Assyriologists. After a
violent controversy it has finally been shown that the
Yaudi of Tiglath-pileser III.‘a inscriptions ought to be
identified with the Yadi or Yaudi of the Zinjirli
inscriptions, and consequently that Azriyahu was not king of
Judah, but a king of Northern Syria. This view appears to me
to harmonise so well with what remains of the texts, and
with our knowledge of the events, that I have had no
hesitation in adopting it.
Azriyahu took advantage of the events which kept Tiglath-pileser fully occupied in the east, to form a coalition in favour of himself among the states on the banks of the Orontes, including some seventeen provinces, dependencies of Hamath, and certain turbulent cities of Northern Phoenicia, such as Byblos, Arka, Zimyra, Usnû, Siannu, Coele-Syria, and even Hadrach itself. It is not quite clear whether Damascus and the Hebrews took part in this movement. Jeroboam had died in 740, after a prosperous reign of forty-one years, and on his death Israel seems to have fallen under a cloud; six months later, his son Zechariah was assassinated at Ibleam by Shallum, son of Jabesh, and the prophecy of Amos, in which he declared that the house of Jeroboam should fall beneath the sword of Jahveh,* was fulfilled. Shallum himself reigned only one month: two other competitors had presented themselves immediately after his crime;** the ablest of these, Menahem, son of Gadi, had come from Tirzah to Samaria, and, after suppressing his rivals, laid hands on the crown.*** He must have made himself master of the kingdom little by little, the success of his usurpation being entirely due to the ruthless energy invariably and everywhere displayed by him; as, for instance, when Tappuakh (Tiphsah) refused to open its gates at his summons, he broke into the town and slaughtered its inhabitants.****
* Amos vii. 9.
** The nameless prophet, whose prediction is handed down to
us in Zech. ix.—xi., speaks of three shepherds cut off by
Javeh in one month (xi. 8); two of these were Zechariah and
Shallum; the third is not mentioned in the Book of Kings.
*** 2 Kings xiv. 23-29; xv. 8-15.
**** 2 Kings xv. 16. The Massoretic text gives the name of
the town as Tipsah, but the Septuagint has Taphôt, which led
Thenius to suggest Tappuakh as an emendation of Tipsah:
Stade prefers the emendation Tirzah.
All the defects of organisation, all the sources of weakness, which for the last half-century had been obscured by the glories of Jeroboam II., now came to the surface, and defied all human efforts to avert their consequences. “Then,” as Hosea complains, “is the iniquity of Ephraim discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria; for they commit falsehood: and the thief entereth in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without. And they consider not in their hearts that I (Jahveh) remember all their wickedness: now have their own doings beset them about; they are before My face. They make the king glad with their wickedness and the princes with their lies. They are all adulterers; they are as an oven heated by the baker.... They... devour their judges; all their kings are fallen; there is none among them that calleth unto Me.” * In Judah, Azariah (Uzziah) had at first shown some signs of ability; he had completed the conquest of Idumsea, Edom, and had fortified Elath,** but he suddenly found himself stricken with leprosy, and was obliged to hand over the reins of government of Jotham.***
* Sos. vii. 1-4, 7.
** 2 Kings xiv. 22; in 2 Ghron. xxvi. 6-15 he is credited
with the reorganisation of the army and of the Judsean
fortress, in addition to campaigns against the Philistines
and Arabs.
*** 2 Kings xv. 5; cf. 2 Ghron. xxvi. 19-21. Azariah is also
abbreviated into Uzziah. Tappuakh was a town situated on the
borders of Ephraim and Manasseh (Josh. xvi. 8; xvii. 7, 8).
His long life had been passed uneventfully, and without any disturbance, under the protection of Jeroboam; but the very same defects which had led to the ruin of Israel were at work also in Judah, and Menahem, in spite of his enfeebled condition, had nothing to fear in this direction.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch published by Layard.