the thought of the miseries the Syrian would cause Israel.' Quailing before the gaze thus fixed on him, Hazael turned aside confused and ashamed, resenting the imputation of treason. Next day, however, Hazael was king. He, or some one commissioned by him, had overpowered Benhadad in his bath, and had suffocated him with the wet cloths he had been using.3 Benhadad, though brave, had been unsuccessful. Assyria had repeatedly defeated him; Israel had put his armies to flight once and again, and the various Syrian kings who had been his vassals had revolted. It was incumbent, therefore, on Hazael to restore the honour of the State, and to this he devoted a fierce and able energy. Notwithstanding treaty engagements, the Israelitish town of Ramoth Gilead, one of the great fastnesses on the east of Jordan, and the key to the district of Argob and Jair, had been held by the Syrians since its seizure by Benhadad I. in the reign of Omri. Ahab had perished in an attempt to recover it, and Ahaziah had died while preparing for a second expedition with the same object. Joram, encouraged by the favourable issue of the siege of Samaria, now determined on another effort to win it back. Allying himself with his nephew-Athaliah's son-Ahaziah, king of Judah-as his father had done with Jehoshaphat, the two, with their joint forces, marched across the Jordan and wrested the town from Syria; holding it henceforth in spite of all the efforts of Hazael to reconquer The ferocity of ancient warfare is well shown in verse 12 of 2 Kings viii. The Assyrian inscriptions mention Hazael as the successor of Benhadad. Schrader, Keilinschriften, p. 164. 3 Ewald speaks of the quilt on which he had been lying in the hot bath as the "coverlet" used. • Smith's Assyria, p. 54, Jos., Ant., IX. vi. 1. Gesch., vol. iii. p. 562. • Jos., Ant., VIII. xv. 3. it. Joram, however, narrowly escaped the fate of Ahab, for he was so severely wounded by a Syrian arrow during the fight, that he had to leave the fortress in the hands of a general-in-chief, and return to his palace at Jezreel, to be healed.1 Meanwhile it had fared ill with the ancient faith, both in Israel and Judah. Passive under the strong and untamed will of the queen-mother Jezebel, Joram, though not himself an idolater, had, like his father Ahab, allowed her to favour and promote the heathenism she loved. The huge Baal temple, built by Ahab in Samaria, with its staff of 450 white-robed priests,3 was maintained with great splendour. That of Asherah, at Jezreel, with 400 priests, still polluted the land by its rites and worship. The vast courts of the Samaritan Baal-temple were thronged with worshippers at the high festivals of the god. Phenician idolatry was becoming an Israelitish institution. Sacred pillars and images glittered on all sides; that of Baal himself shining out from the darkness of the inner holy of holies-half fortress, half sanctuary -in which it rose, awfully, aloft. Fifty years had passed since the introduction of heathenism, yet the open worshippers of Baal were still so few, outside the court party in Samaria, that all found in the whole king.. dom, could assemble at one time in the temple area. Indifference, however, had spread far and wide; im morality was sapping the national character, and the future ruin of Jehovah worship seemed assured, if things continued as they were. 1 2 Kings viii. 28; ix. 15. 2 Chron. xxii. 6. 21 Kings xvi. 32. Baal, in Riehm. These pillars were shaped like obelisks. Movers. J. G. Müller thinks they were dials and the like. Baal, in Herzog. • 2 Kings x. 21. In Judah the baleful influence of Jezebel was no less threatening; Athaliah, her daughter, repeating there the part her mother was playing in Israel. Wholly under her spell, her husband, Jehoram, had allowed Baal worship to be set up, in its most repulsive features, in Jerusalem itself. After his death, their one surviving son, Jehoahaz or Azariah, was only king in name. In reality, Athaliah reigned. A temple to Baal had already been built by her family, in part from the stones of the temple of Jehovah, which had been defaced to construct it; and the sacred vessels had been taken for the service of the idol. It had its altars, images, and staff of clergy, under a chief-Mattan-the only priest of Baal whose name has survived. A heathen camarilla was supreme alike in Jerusalem and Samaria. The moral and political cancer of heathenism had invaded the last sanctuary of Jehovah worship. Israel had long been tainted; Judah was now in peril. The national faith was in danger of being driven from the land. In such a crisis the prophets, in all emergencies the faithful Swiss Guard of the true religion, must, at last, have felt it imperative to break, finally and for ever, with the house of Ahab. The mass of the people were still more or less loyal to the past, and they were profoundly discontented. The long protest of Elijah and Elisha had spread silently through the land, and had undermined the authority of the reigning house. That a woman like Jezebel, a foreigner and a heathen-should have held the sway in Israel for two reigns-lording it over the Church as well as the State, at the caprice of her imperious will, had become intolerable. Only a spark was needed to kindle a universal revolt. To the prophets especially, and among them to Elisha, their head, the 1 2 Chron. xxiv. 4, 7. 22 Kings xi. 18. save the country All was at stake. extremest measures that promised to were not only justifiable, but a duty. Religion and even the nation itself must perish if the family of Ahab continued to reign. But the revolution thus believed to be unavoidable, required a first impulse. On whom did it devolve to give this but on the head of the prophets, as the divinely commissioned representative of nationality, of the true religion, and of popular freedom and rights? Nor did it seem to Elisha that he could rely simply on moral influence. The spirit of Elijah had risen within him. The only adequate action to be taken was political. The sternness and fire-like energy of his master pointed out what appeared to be the true Truth and right, in this view of things, could be served only by his throwing himself directly into the stream of events, and bringing about a violent solution of the crisis. The revolution which presently developed itself, under his direct impulse, was at once the execution of a long impending judgment on the house of Ahab for its crimes, and a fierce stroke for the preservation of the religious and national interests of the land. course. THE army at Ramoth Gilead had been left by Joram under the command of his chief officer, Jehu,' a veteran who in his youth had been in the body guard of Ahab, and high in his favour. Since then, his long service and apparent fidelity had secured him the confidence of Ahaziah and Joram. Under a smooth exterior however, had his master known it, there lay hidden the most dangerous qualities. Apparently no more than a fiery and resolute soldier, he was a true Hebrew in his power of dissimulation and subtle craft. He had ridden in the chariot behind Ahab, with his comrade Bidkar or Bar Dakar, on that fatal journey from Samaria to Jezreel, when Elijah suddenly encountered the king and denounced the murder of Naboth and his sons, and he had heard the portentous curse on Ahab and his house. The scene and the sentence of wrath could never be forgotten, and perhaps raised ambitious thoughts, cherished ever after in his heart. Elijah's bearing, moreover, may have shown that he expected him to be the instrument of vengeance. In any case, he had long brooded 12 Kings ix. 25. |