of the Idumeans which had suddenly swollen to such a height.' Meanwhile the Philistines also in the west, who had been subjugated by Uzziah, had an opportunity of reasserting their liberty without being interfered with, and of making the most alarming progress. Under these circumstances Judah lay completely exposed; and now for the first time Pekah's savage troops seem to have laid Judah waste after the fashion recorded by the Chronicles. According to this authority they slew one hundred and twenty thousand able-bodied men in one day, and carried away to Samaria two hundred thousand prisoners, including women and children; but here four noble individuals, at the representation of the prophet Oded, effected the release of all the captives, and, after supplying them with ample provision, had them escorted back to Jericho as a frontier town. In the form in which we now have it, this story no doubt exhibits strong marks of the colouring of the Chronicler, but yet so many of its details bear the genuine stamp of history that we cannot be wrong in supposing it to be ultimately derived from the State-annals.

3

Hard pressed in this way on every side, the weak Ahaz sent an urgent entreaty for help to the Assyrian king TiglathPileser, who eagerly seized the opportunity of chastising the two allied kingdoms, the recent elevation of which was too palpably opposed to the more extensive projects of the Assyrian power. Whether he entered into any preliminary negotiations with the conquerors or not, we have no means of knowing; suffice it to say that he destroyed the Aramean kingdom of Damascus, and slew its king Rezin," and deprived even the kingdom of the Ten Tribes of the whole of its territory on the north, as well as on the other side of the Jordan; 6 indeed, the Damascenes were immediately banished to the northern Kir," while the Israelites of the ceded territories were exiled to other provinces of Assyria at a greater distance still. For the rest, it seems that although Damascus was situated nearer to Assyria, yet the

I have thus explained on historical grounds, somewhat more accurately than in the Propheten des A. B. i. p. 489 sqq., the portion which has been preserved of Obadiah's oracle against Edom; Obadiah may very likely have been the name of the prophet then living, and may have merely been retained in ver. 1 by later editors.

22 Chron. xxviii. 17 sq., Is. xiv. 29. 32 Chron. xxviii. 5-15; it does not follow from the expression in ver. 7 that the king's son there mentioned must actually have been a son of Ahaz.

This is the form of the name always found in the books of Kings; the Chroni

kingdom of the Ten Tribes was the first to be attacked by the Assyrians, since its inroads upon Judah had to be restrained before anything else was done; next came the turn of Hamath,' and lastly of Damascus, which was then punished by absolute destruction."

The great prophets who were labouring about this time in Judah, speak with deep sorrow of the deportation of these Israelites, and hope for a restoration and glorification of the northern and eastern districts which then lay waste, but certainly not under king Pekah, nor indeed under the existing conditions at all.3 Pekah himself, after the loss of almost half his kingdom, which he had wantonly brought upon himself, continued to rule after the same fashion as before, except that, as a vassal of Assyria, he was now compelled to leave Judah at rest. At last, when he had reigned twenty-nine years, and Damascus, which had supported him, had fallen, the patience of his subjects seems to have been exhausted; Hoshea, the son of Elah, conspired against him with success, but in this, as in all similar cases in this kingdom, the victory was only secured by the murder of the king.

3. It looks like the bitter irony of fate that this Hoshea, who was to be the last king, was a better one than any of his predecessors. The words of the true prophets who had uttered so many and such important truths concerning this kingdom. during the last fifty years, may perhaps have exercised a more powerful influence over him, and instilled into him better principles; but they had always predicted its fall as certain, and now the irresistible force of history was to prove that no single man, whatever might be his position and superiority, could be strong enough to delay the ruin of the whole structure if the right moment for its reformation had passed.

The utmost efforts both of the new king and of all who had raised him to the throne, were clearly directed towards freeing their country from the Assyrian supremacy. At last they saw clearly into what a mistake they had fallen ever since the time of Menahem, and feared to meet the same fate under the heavy

hand of the Assyrians, which had already overtaken Damascus and so many other kingdoms west of the Euphrates. The recent death of Tiglath-Pileser, and the fact that no obligations had yet been entered into with the new Assyrian king Shalmaneser,' were favourable to their exertions; for as yet all engagements contracted between different states might easily be treated as cancelled by the death of one of the contracting princes. In other respects, too, external circumstances seemed favourable. It was the time during which the Assyrians were involved in a protracted war with the Phoenicians, which offered the first considerable check to the stream of their conquest. In the preceding years the Chittites, that is the Phoenician colonists of Cyprus and other islands, had thrown off the supremacy of the mother country, and disturbed the whole extent of the Syrian sea-board,' with the material assistance of the Grecian and other restless inhabitants of the coast; but they were at length reconquered by the Tyrian king Elulæus. Whilst the Tyrians were enjoying the fame of this triumph, they were attacked by Shalmaneser, on what pretext we do not exactly know. At first all the Phoenician cities, with Tyre at their head, resisted the Assyrians, and it is probable that Samaria, also, endeavoured at this time to maintain its ground against them in concert with the Phoenicians. But Sidon, Acre, Old Tyre, and other Phoenician cities, wearied by the burden of the war, made their peace with Shalmaneser, and Insular Tyre

This monarch is repeatedly designated in the Greek text of Tobit i. by the corrupt name of Enemessar (cf. Gött. Gel. Anz. 1851, p. 987); moreover, the deportation under Shalmaneser is there confused with that under Tiglath-Pileser.

2 All this is known from the passage of the Tyrian History of Menander, quoted by Jos. Ant. ix. 14. 2; cf. Num. xxiv. 24. The fifth narrator of the primitive history, accordingly, wrote some ten years before the death of Ahaz (cf. i. p. 110), a period with which all the other indications tally; Edom, for instance, had then revolted again from Judah. It is only to be lamented that Josephus gives no more ample quotations from the work of Menander, and does not define the chronology more exactly. The name of Elulaus does not arise from a confusion with the almost contemporary ruler of Babylon mentioned in the Canon of Ptolemy. The coincidence of the names may be accidental, or the reading Elyseus may be more correct.

As may be gathered from the mention of the Ionians in Zech. ix. 13, comp. with

Num. xxiv. 24.

4

It was probably about this time that the Assyrians also destroyed the small kingdoms of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah, [Avvah] on the Phoenician borders, for they are clearly mentioned in 2 Kings xviii. 34, xix. 13, as the last cities overthrown; and although the names are rather obscure, and Hena is never mentioned again, yet the name of Sepharvaim appears to be identical with the abbreviated form of Sepharam (cf. note on Obad. ver. 20), and the Not. Dign. Orient. c. 31 (ed. Böcking, p. 84 sq.) still specifies an Avatha in Phoenicia; moreover, Sepharvaim and Ivah [Avvah] appear again in alliance with the neighbouring Hamath in Esarhaddon's time, 2 Kings xvii. 30 sq., compared with ver. 24. For the rest we must follow the passages last cited in reading ay for my in 2 Kings xviii. 24, xix. 13. We cannot think of the Sepphara of southern Babylonia in this connexion, because it certainly had no king of its own, and because any disturbances in those eastern regions at this time are highly improbable. What attempts, how

seemed obliged to follow this example; and under these circumstances the new king of Samaria, also, had no other course but to submit to an advancing Assyrian army and pay tribute.' But hardly had the Assyrian forces retired to a little distance when Insular Tyre raised its head again in freedom; and although the Assyrians received sixty ships and eight hundred oarsmen from the other Phoenicians, for an attack upon it, yet the Tyrians with twelve ships won a brilliant victory over them; so that Shalmaneser contented himself for five years with preventing the Insular Tyrians from fetching water from the main land, and was still unable to reduce them.

This glorious resistance of the Insular Tyrians against the Assyrians would not be observed without the most lively satisfaction in the neighbouring Samaria: it was now seen to be possible for the Assyrians to be beaten; and when a few years had passed, it was thought that a favourable opportunity had arrived for concluding an offensive and defensive alliance against the Assyrians with the Egyptian king Seveh; for the twentyfifth, or Ethiopic dynasty, which was then ruling in Egypt, appeared to be the only power which could successfully maintain a contest against them by land. Thus Egypt, the radical foe of the original foundation of the religion and polity of the people of Israel,-Egypt, the same dark influence which had formerly lent its aid in the establishment of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes under Jeroboam I., was now at last to contribute in no small degree to its complete destruction; and so, in this, as in other respects, it reverted in its close to the circumstances of its commencement. Ever since the age which immediately succeeded the fall of the house of Jehu, the thoughts and hopes of the kingdom, as its last breath drew nigh, had fluctuated between Egypt and Assyria; and during the spasmodic convulsions of the last decades and the forcible removal of a number of distinguished Israelites, many of the people, in some

ever, are made at the present day to find all three towns there, may be seen in G. Rawlinson's Evidences, p. 425.

12 Kings xvii. 3. The short account here given certainly makes no mention of a contemporary Phoenician war, but nothing in it is inconsistent with the order of events supposed in the text.

This is how the name must be pronounced (2 Kings xvii. 4) which the Masora reads So, for, at any rate, the former sound might easily pass into the latter, according to the Hebrew laws of sound (Lehrb. § 55c). The name Sabakon in Hero

dotus is also the same; we may, however, refer this to the weak Sabakon II. or Sevichos II. The exact time of the accession of an Egyptian king of this dynasty is somewhat difficult to determine, on account of the Dodecarchy which intervened between him and his successor; we may suppose, however, with Wilkinson, that this Seveh ascended the throne in 728, his successor Tirhakah in 714 B.C.

3 It is clear from such expressions as Is. xxiii. 5, xx. 6, that the Phoenicians also hoped much from Egypt at that time. 4 P. 156 sq.

instances to escape the internal commotions, in others to escape the violence of the Assyrians, must again and again have fled to Egypt, and there met with a tolerably good reception.' Indeed, since the Egyptians were a people of ancient and progressive civilisation, and were, moreover, then making fresh efforts for freedom, many might give the preference to them with great show of reason, if once the question arose whether protection-and in the case of imminent danger of utter destruction, shelter-were to be sought from them or from the Assyrians. But as soon as the Assyrian king heard of ambassa ors being sent to Egypt, he immediately turned upon Hoshea, whom he took by surprise, summoned him before his presence to listen to his explanations, but, as soon as he came, took him prisoner, put him in chains, and imprisoned him, probably on the frontier of the country. This treatment of a good king, who had by that time been several years on the throne, instead of intimidating the country, as was expected, produced a feeling of great bitterness. The whole population which remained in the kingdom, already so much reduced, armed itself for a desperate resistance, and such a fearful blast of stormy passion swept through the land that those who looked from a distance upon this struggle, which must of necessity be in the end unsuccessful, can have seen nothing in it but the drunken riot of a mad presumption. Yet the victory seemed doubtful for a time, and it is remarkable how strong a resemblance the fall of Samaria bears to the first and second destructions of Jerusalem, in the heroic resistance of its inhabitants. The Assyrian army had to overrun the whole country, and conquer all the fortresses as a preliminary measure; Samaria itself only fell after a siege of almost three years. Shalmaneser, however, revenged himself by putting an end to the kingdom altogether, and banishing the larger number and the most valiant of the inhabitants to distant Assyrian cities.1

This follows from such prophetic utterances as Zech. x. 19 sq., Is. xi. 11; Hosea, too, had already referred distinctly to such possibilities, ix. 6.

2 The short words in 2 Kings xvii. 4, cf. xviii. 9-11, cannot be understood in any other way, for the evidence of the rest of the history opposes the idea that the events described in ver. 5 really happened before the incarceration of the king, and that this verse merely brings up the narrative to the point already reached. If Hoshea had defended himself to the utmost, Shalmaneser would not have seized and imprisoned him (which is signified by y), but would have killed him on the spot,

which was the fate of the king of Damascus.

8 Cf. Is. xxviii. 1-4. Yet Isaiah is here no doubt alluding to the position of Sa maria at the time when, before the incarceration of the king, there was a desire to conclude the ill-considered league with Egypt.

Just as the Romans treated many nations, especially under Augustus, Liv. xl. 37 sq., Dio Cassius, Hist. liv. 11, Florus, Hist. iv. 12.-The plausible representa tions which the Assyrians would be sure to make in such cases may be seen in Is. xxxvi. 16 sq.