he employed the time very wisely in his own fashion, in securing greater prosperity for the kingdom, and at the same time a larger measure of tranquillity for his own house. He ruled the country like his camp, with great energy and decision, not even sparing the prophets when they interfered with his views.1 Warned, however, by the fate of previous kings, he sought by concessions, and even provisional sacrifices, to secure the necessary tranquillity abroad, in order the more to strengthen his royal authority at home. He concluded peace with Judah, and thus established a new principle, to which his successors remained faithful, much to their own advantage. In the same way he made peace with Damascus, where Benhadad 2 was still on the throne, though on two somewhat hard conditions. In the first place he gave up some towns (we do not know exactly which), which the armies of Damascus appear to have occupied for some time; they probably lay exclusively on the east of the Jordan, and Ramoth in Gilead was perhaps among them.3 In the second place he conceded to the Aramean king the right to establish fixed quarters in Samaria,' that is, to maintain a permanent embassy (as we might say) in a large and well-fortified house, with its own servants, &c., so as to be able the more easily to observe and exercise surveillance over the allied but half-subject country from its centre at the capital. The modern right of embassy was not then in existence; and when it first appears, is only the one-sided right of the conqueror.-It was 6 Comp. the expression in 1 Kings xvi. 25, which is never used of the three preceding kings. 2 Pp. 24, 34. This may, at any rate, be inferred with tolerable certainty from 1 Kings xxii. 3. 4 13 9. 2; and in the Middle Ages the vassals حوش 4 According to 1 Kings xxiv. 30. If the word in were to be understood to mean streets (for which in every other passage we find niyan), it would still be hardly correct to understand by the expression 'to make streets in Samaria' that permission was given for Syrian merchants to carry on their trade freely in the city, settlement, station, camp, or with of Samaria, and that for that purpose they the historically memorable; the were to have a quarter of their own, just as the Tyrians occupied a quarter in Mem phis. This meaning would not be implied latter would suit the best, in as far as clearly enough in the words. It would be preferable to regard them as military also corresponds with The word was probably of Damascene origin; and the name of the city in ?, Num. xxii. 39, probably originally signifies camp-city, and should be spelt so. in accordance with this policy that Omri's chief efforts were directed to the promotion of trade. Of this the marriage of his son and successor with a Tyrian princess was merely the plainest indication, and probably also the direct result. Connected with this, too, was the favour with which the influx of heathen religions and manners was promoted, while the remonstrances of the prophets were most severely chastised. These are the sort of statutes of Omri' whose deeply objectionable nature the later prophets still lament; and such was the rapidity with which the northern kingdom relapsed—only a great deal more grievously-into the spirit of the last years of Solomon's reign! 1 2. What settled order Omri succeeded in establishing in other respects, in spite of his severity towards the prophets, and the humiliating conditions of his peace with Damascus, iş clearly shown by the tranquillity in which his son Ahab, though a less able ruler, reigned for twenty-two years not altogether ingloriously, and was in his turn succeeded on the throne by his two sons, Ahaziah and Joram, for a period of fourteen years. Ahab (more correctly Achaab), who comes prominently before us through his connexion with the history of his great contemporary Elijah, was in fact rather a vain than a really cruel and arbitrary prince. Not unwarlike, or indifferent to the honour of his people and his house, and contending with partial success against the Arameans, he yet preferred peace with all its arts and advantages, and promoted it himself by all means in his power. He married (as has been already stated) a Sidonian, or rather a Tyrian princess named Jezebel,' daughter of Ethbaal king of Tyre, who had formerly been a priest of Astarte, but had violently dispossessed his brother Phelles (himself a usurper) of the throne. The connexion thus formed with Phoenicia certainly strengthened his inclination to promote peaceful trade; we are, however, specially informed besides that, like Solomon, he was fond of building cities. During his reign, also, a certain Hiel, of Bethel, evidently a wealthy and enterprising person, re-erected the city of Jericho, which had lain in ruins ever since the conquest of Joshua. While the restoration was going on, he seems to have lost two sons, which revived the ancient tradition of the curse pronounced upon the city by Joshua after its reduction, and gave rise to the saying that 1 Micah vi. 16. 3 2 The name was spelt somewhat differently in Hellenistic Greek, 'IeŠaẞéλ. According to 1 Kings xvi. 31, comp. with Menander in Joseph. Ant. viii. 13. 2, 5 Hiel had been obliged to lay the foundation of the new Jericho at the price of his first-born Abiram, and to set up its gates when completed at the price of his youngest son Segub.' From this time, however, the city continued to flourish, as it well deserved to do on account of the fertile plain in which it lay.2 By thus promoting peace and commerce, Ahab found the means of preventing his reign from being destitute of art and splendour. He built himself a new palace with extensive gardens at Jezreel (now Zerîn), which lay on a charming eminence, open on all sides, in the fertile plain north of Samaria; and either here or at Samaria stood his ivory house, which is celebrated as a special curiosity of his reign. In the time of Solomon, ivory was first used for a chair of state; Ahab decorated with it an entire house." ous. 4 But in a kingdom which had no firm foundation, this alliance 'with a Tyrian princess might easily prove exceedingly dangerSince the times of David and Solomon, it is true, many treaties had been concluded between Phoenicia and Israel, and close bonds of friendship formed; and Tyre gladly sought to promote its own safety by remaining allied with its more powerful neighbour, while it naturally became the more indifferent towards Judah." It was, however, at the same time, the special business of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes to restore the ancient rigidness of the nationality of Israel; a Canaanitish princess was necessarily, therefore, regarded with suspicion. Jezebel, moreover, belonging to a line which gained its crown by violence, was full of self-will, thirst for power, and arrogance. With perverse pride, she looked down upon a people whose essential sanctity she neither perceived nor respected. Her influence over the king became only too great. At her desire he erected in Samaria a spacious temple of Baal, the principal Phoenician deity, to which four hundred and fifty priests were attached; and while the interior contained representations of the Sun-god (probably with his fellow deities) on numerous small pillars, a large statue of the same deity was set up in front of it. He erected another splendid edifice of the same 11 Kings xvi. 34; cf. i. p. 114 note 3. 2 Wherever Jericho is mentioned earlier, as in 2 Sam. x. 5, we must always assume it was a newly-built open city adjoining the ancient ruins. This is clear from the numerous allusions to it from 1 Kings xviii. 45 to 2 Kings x. * 1 Kings xxii. 39. 5 Vol. iii. p. 250. There is subsequent mention of several such houses; Amos iii. 15, Ps. xlv. 9 [8]. 7 On these two points comp. Joel iv. [iii.] 4, Amos i. 9, Ps. xlv. 13 [12]. 81 Kings xvi. 31 sq., xviii. 19, 2 Kings iii. 2, x. 25-27; cf. the Alterthümer, p. 262. The Astarte, as Jos. Gen. Hypomn. c. xxxix. explains Badλ (p. 27 note 7), is probably alluded to as the star, Amos v. 25, according to the description in Sanchoniathon, p. 36, 1 Orell. kind, with which four hundred priests were connected, as an oracle-grove of Astarte; this was probably near his favourite palace at Jezreel. At these sanctuaries the king of Israel offered sacrifices himself. His practice was certainly adopted by many in deference to the royal example. To others, the novelty and the sensual charm of the foreign religion proved the more attractive, the greater the prosperity they witnessed in the heathen states; and the king certainly thought trade and commerce increased when all religious restraints were removed. In this way the northern kingdom relapsed, only to a more grievous extent, into the errors of Solomon's reign, which it had been created to avoid. This tendency could not fail, however, to call forth from the prophets the strongest possible resistance; and several acts of civil injustice into which the king allowed himself to be hurried by Jezebel, such as the affair of Naboth, aroused against him with intenser bitterness the feeling of the Ten Tribes, which on questions of this kind was so sensitive. The decline of the kingdom, both nationally and religiously, into a far worse condition than under Solomon, while it had been torn from the house of David by the prophets for the express purpose of becoming something quite different, naturally gave rise to a mortal struggle between prophetism and the monarchy, which, after various vicissitudes, resulted in the overthrow of the house of Omri also, and once more raised the ancient power of prophetism to its highest point. This, however, will be better reviewed further on, in connexion with the labours of Elijah, the great prophetic hero of this age, and his successors. IV. CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS CENTURY. The general condition of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes during the first century of its independent existence may be ascertained, approximately at any rate, from detached indications. Neither the withdrawal of the Levites, nor the widening breach which at length assumed the most extreme form between the two great independent powers of the state-prophetism and the crown, could at once demoralise the mass of the people. From the better times that had gone before, there still remained a firm basis of healthy national life, as might be 1 1 Kings xvi. 32, xviii. 19; that this second structure was probably erected at Jezreel, is certainly only an inference from the fact that it is not mentioned in the minute and ancient narrative in 2 Kings x. 25-27. Further, the prophets of the two temples, so often named in 1 Kings xviii., were quite different from the priests. expected in a community which had been long trained in so true a religion, and had just passed through a hundred years of such growth as had recently marked the history of Israel.1 The most striking evidence of the condition of the people at this time is supplied by the Canticles. This poem occupies in many respects a strange and unique position in the Old Testament, and only becomes intelligible to us when we refer it back to the period and country in which it appears to have arisen.2 We find ourselves transported in it, in the most vivid manner, into a time which still retained a definite historical remembrance of all the peculiarities of the age of Solomon, and which was flooded by a most copious stream of genuine popular recollections of David and Solomon; for this cantata must have been composed before Tirzah, as the capital of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, had ceased to be the rival of Jerusalem. But we also feel ourselves surrounded in it by the breezes of that popular feeling against the moral transgressions of the magnificent Solomon, which was the peculiar characteristic of the moment when the kingdom of the Ten Tribes was founded, and of its early years, and stirred the noblest fibres of its heart. It was not written for the purpose of showing why the kingdom of the Ten Tribes revolted from the house of Solomon; but it unintentionally exhibits the spirit which brought about this event, and which might remain in full force fifty or a hundred years later. That the poem is one whole, and constitutes a sort of popular drama, or more correctly speaking, a cantata, may now be regarded as proved. It thus affords us remarkable evidence of the vigorous development then attained by art, and of the extent to which the artistic activity, so powerfully aroused under Solomon, retained its hold on the general national life, even in more and more unfavourable times. The 1 Consider, for instance, the modesty of the woman of Shunem, 2 Kings iv. 12 sq. 2 I still abide in all essentials by my treatment of this poem in 1826. The kingdom of the Ten Tribes is also pointed to by the name of the heroine of the piece Sulammith, i.e. maiden of Shunem (vol. iii. p. 103; Lehrb. p. 405, ed. 1863). Echoes of Canticles vii. 10 are found in Prov. xxiii. 31; of Cant. viii. 7 in Prov. vi. 30 sq.; of Cant. vi. 9 in Prov. xxxi. 28; of Cant. viii. 6 in Jer. xxii. 24, Hagg. ii. 23; from which it may be seen that this most beautiful song, after being long forgotten, was once more much read, at any rate from the end of the eighth century. The doubts of the dramatic nature of the song arise from a misconception partly 3 of the song itself, partly of the history of |