most easy to discover occurs towards the conclusion. Pekah king of Israel and Jotham king of Judah enter upon their reigns almost at the same time; but from Jotham's first year to Hezekiah's sixth we have thirty-eight years, from Pekah's first to Hoshea's last only twenty-nine. If, in the case of Pekah's reign, we assume that the reading twenty is a mistake for twenty-nine, order is at once restored, and the connexion of the words remains in other respects entirely unaltered.'-The other mistake has sunk rather deeper into the present narrative. The reign of Amaziah king of Judah began, it is stated, in the second year of Joash king of Israel, and lasted twenty-nine years; and that of his son Uzziah lasted fifty-two years. If this be so, and if Joash of Israel reigned sixteen years, and his son Jeroboam II. forty-one years, the latter cannot, as our present text says, have died and been succeeded by his son Zachariah in the thirty-eighth year of Uzziah. The difficulty is increased still more by the identification of the year of Uzziah's succession with the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam II.;3 whereas, according to the preceding suppositions, it must really have been the fifteenth, and there is independent evidence that it But even here we may recognise the origin of the mistake which must have crept in. Instead of giving Jeroboam these twelve years too much at the accession of Uzziah, we must rather add them to the whole duration of his reign, making it fifty-three instead of forty-one years. If these two mistakes are corrected, the whole chronology of this period of one hundred and sixty-five years becomes clear, and we may consider the separate numbers in general as quite trustworthy.1 If we add the time to the death of Hezekiah, there will be one hundred and eighty-eight years in all. was so. 1 Thus we have only to suppose that y has fallen out after in 2 Kings xv. 27. In this case, no doubt, the twentieth year of king Jotham, 2 Kings xv. 30, still creates a difficulty, but this date is so utterly irreconcilable with that in 2 Kings xvii. I as well as with all the chronology, that we cannot look upon it as anything but a mistake. The Peshito and Arab. Polygl. have the still more extraordinary reading of the second year, unless this is a trace of the true reading in 2 Kings xvii. 1. 2 statement in 2 Kings xiv. 17 is of special importance; everything before and after it agrees with it. The old translators had certainly all the same reading. Modern chronologers usually insert after Jeroboam II. and after Pekah many years of interregnum, during which the kingdom of the Ten Tribes had no king at all. But, in any case, this is an erroneous assumption, for it is in direct contradiction of the meaning of the narrative, and shows an utter misconception of the history. We must, therefore, correct the little mistakes which have unquestionably 32 Kings xv. 1 sq. Here the clear crept into the present text. 22 Kings xiv. 1 sq., 16 sq., 23, 29, xv. 8. A. THE HOUSE OF JEHU.-DISSOLUTION OF ANCIENT PROPHETISM, I. JEHU, JOASH, AND JEROBOAM II. For a period of one hundred and fourteen years and a half this dynasty, comprising five kings, retained the supremacy in a state in which every other royal line, even if it survived the first moment of its establishment, had collapsed in a far shorter time. Moreover, it restored to the kingdom, for a comparatively long period, a full measure of external power and honour, and this, too, though it had at first to contend for a long time against the most serious obstacles. But the causes of the longer duration and greater power of this house must not be sought simply in the sturdy valour of its founder and his successors, although it is remarkable that all the first four kings of the house retained this quality in equal measure; for similar bravery characterised every founder of a dynasty which endured any considerable time, as well as many another king, but no other house maintained itself so long. The following are rather the real causes of this phenomenon. After the violent expulsion of injurious and foreign elements, the kingdom was fairly thrust back again upon its original principles; viz. exclusive worship of Jahveh under the form of an ox, mutual understanding with the prophets of Jahveh, more faithful maintenance of all popular liberties, and opposition to Judah; while the primeval Bethel became once more the favourite seat, after Samaria, of the kings and their religion. It was necessary that the kingdom should now remain for a long time far more faithful to these first principles than it had been in earlier times, before it had passed through such terrible experiences. Its regeneration had only been effected by the most violent means; and having survived this, it sought, with a more honest exertion of all its powers, to realise whatever its first principles placed within its reach. Even the external distress into which it sank for a long period soon after its regeneration, in consequence of the great efforts through which it had attained to it, served to maintain it longer and more resolutely in this same direction. Again, when we consider that the good understanding, which lasted so long, between the two great independent powers of the state steadily improved the condition 1 Cf. 2 Kings x. 34. xiii. 8..12, xiv. 28 with xv. 11. 2 Amos vii. 13. of the ancient community, and must have been of the greatest value in uniting and confirming the scattered forces of a fallen kingdom, we shall see how peculiarly fortunate it was that the mighty Elisha, the real founder of the regenerated state, then stood by the side of the new kings with advice and protection for more than five-and-forty years, and, honoured alike by the whole people and the king as 'father' and as the surest stay of the realm,' died only in extreme old age. 1. The brightest prophetic anticipations and encouragements of prophetic support still accompanied Jehu during the first period of his reign. It was afterwards said that Jahveh had foretold to him that 'great-grandchildren should succeed him on the throne,' as they actually did.' We no longer possess the original words in which contemporary prophets promised a long enduring rule to the new king and his house, yet it is incontestable that these cheering anticipations clustered round the first days of the new dynasty, for these later stories could not otherwise have so much as come into existence. The obstacles against which the new dynasty had to contend were no doubt of extraordinary magnitude. Hazael, the new king of Damascus,2 made most relentless use of the feeble condition into which the kingdom had been plunged by the convulsions of the great revolution and its consequences, to re-establish the former supremacy of the Aramean kingdom, so that Jehu, in spite of his great and inexhaustible 3 valour, saw himself compelled, at last, to cede all the territory beyond the Jordan.1 Similar concessions had on every previous occasion marked the accession of a fresh dynasty in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes (as we saw in the cases of Jeroboam," of Baasha," and of Omri,)7 for the simple reason that the internal commotions and disturbances had always been so violent that a new royal house was obliged to give way a great deal abroad, in order first of all to establish itself in proper security at home. When Jehu died after a reign of twenty-eight years, his son Jehoahaz, who was not inferior to him in valour, seems indeed to have attempted the reconquest of the district in question, but the results were most unfortunate. Victory always remained with the aged Hazael and his Aramean troops; and his son Benhadad even conquered 1 2 Kings x. 30, xv. 12. The name of the prophet who uttered this prediction to Jehu is clearly omitted in this place for a similar reason to that explained on p. 30. 2 P. 93. This follows from the unusual addition of to 1, 2 Kings x. 34, which occurs nowhere else except in the case of Hezekiah, 2 Kings xx. 20, and that of Asa, 1 Kings xv. 23. 4 2 Kings x. 32 sq. 6 P. 34 sq. 4 2 a number of cities on the west of the Jordan,' which had to be ceded to him. The Ammonites, who had always before been in close alliance with the Arameans, seized this opportunity of spreading themselves more widely in Gilead, and vied with the Arameans in the barbarity with which they carried on the war.3 Marauding hosts of Arameans and Moabites 5 penetrated every year into the very heart of the western country; and in the seventeen years of the reign of this monarch the military power of the kingdom had sunk so terribly low that he could only take the field with fifty horsemen, ten war chariots, and ten thousand infantry." 6 Amid these calamities Elisha proved the most trustworthy adviser and the firmest support of his king and his people. In the first place he followed with the most searching glance the plans and stratagems of the Arameans, and not unfrequently frustrated them simply by the certainty of his forecastings and his unwearied vigilance. The reminiscence of these facts has perpetuated itself in the following story,' which gives us a very vivid picture of the popular representations which grew out of them. It happened not unfrequently that the Aramean king, after taking counsel with his most distinguished officers, fixed on a spot in which to set an ambuscade for the king of Israel and his soldiers; but Elisha always warned the king at the right moment not to pass by that particular place, since the Arameans lay in ambush there. Enraged by the constant frustration of these plans, the Aramean king at last declared in the presence of his confidential officers that he suspected treachery on the part of one of their number, but he was told in reply, that Elisha was really the wonderful person who was able to report to the king of Israel what he might say in his chamber. He accordingly resolved to capture Elisha himself in the very place of his abode, Dothan (or Dothain), a town on the great north-eastern road north of Samaria; and for this 8 9 purpose he sent a considerable troop of horsemen and chariots to seize the wonder-worker. The arrival of this force on the neighbouring hills was first perceived by the prophet's servant early in the morning, and he was ready to give up his pusillanimous heart to despair, when his master directed his thoughts and his mental vision to the far mightier hosts of heaven which always protect the pious. As soon as the soldiers came up, Elisha, accompanied by his servant, boldly advanced to meet them, with the assurance that he would show them the man whom they sought, and, as though they were smitten at the prophet's prayer with a heaven-sent blindness, they followed him into the heart of Samaria. There, indeed, their blindness ceased, but when the king of Samaria wished to execute them as prisoners of war, Elisha begged him on the other hand to entertain them hospitably and let them go. The result was, that the account which they could thus take back to their king of the character of the men of Israel was so wonderful, that he desisted thenceforth from his raids against them. But again, Elisha was also the right man to take advantage of the distress of the king and the people to direct them all the more impressively to their true weal and their real strength; so that a new and mightier race was gradually formed under pressure of the most dire necessity. King Jehoahaz prayed to Jahveh, and he heard him and gave the people a victorious deliverer from this distress; '-in these few words the last narrator sums up the whole course of the history of this century.' 2. This great conqueror, it is true, was not to come at once; but in the sixteen years of the reign of king Joash victory gradually returned to the side of Israel. Like his father and grandfather, this king was a very valiant warrior; he won three battles over Benhadad, and recovered from him all the towns west of the Jordan which had been lost under his predecessor. And since, when the tide of war turns in this manner, everything depends on the vigour of the commencement, the results of the first battle at Aphek, the very place where Ahab had formerly defeated the Arameans,' were of a decisive cha looked for it in quite a different place, see Burchard, 5, 3-6; 6, 4, Riculf, p. 106 sq., and Odoricus, p. 147 in Laurent's Peregrinatores. 1 A careful comparison of 2 Kings xiii. 4 sq., and xiv. 26 sq., makes it clear that the narrator meant no other than Jeroboam II. by this deliverer. Since, then, the words in 2 Kings xiii. 6, comp. ver. 2. might belong to this anticipation of the |