fortunes. Struck with mortal sickness, he was visited by the king, whose grandfather he had set on the throne. Under Ahab, the prophets had been driven from the land; but Joash came to ask Elisha's farewell counsels and receive his parting blessing. Bending over him, he wept at losing "the chariot of Israel and its horsemen;" for the dying man had been the true defence and glory of the kingdom. But the patriotism of the seer still glowed as warmly as ever. As he lay near the lattice window for coolness, he made Joash open it, and told him to bend his bow, the favourite weapon of the age, toward the east -the direction of Damascus. Then raising himself from his couch, he laid his own feeble hands on those of the king, and bade him shoot. The act was intended as a sign of approaching deliverance. Three arrows were sped, but the king should have emptied his quiver. It was a fatal error. Had he gone on, said Elisha, he would have destroyed Syria utterly; as it was, he would gain three victories over it.1 One of these was won on the same field, at Aphek, as had seen the defeat of Benhadad II.; the scene of the others is not given, but the result of the whole was the recovery of the towns on the west of the Jordan, wrested by Hazael from king Jehoahaz.3 Joash had not however to fight with Syria and the bands of Moab and Ammon only. In the third year of his reign a new king had ascended the throne of JudahAmaziah, the son of Jehoash,-a man in his early prime, for he was only twenty-five at his accession. Of a brave and enterprising spirit, and true to Jehovah for the greater part of his reign, he wanted the solidity and 1 2 Kings xiii. 14-19. Conder and Merrill place Aphek on the east bank of the Lake of Galilee. See p. 84. 2 Kings xiii. 25. Ibid., xiv. 1. 2 Chron. xxv. 1. calmness which his position demanded. His first act after being firmly seated on the throne boded well. Arresting the palace servants who had murdered his father, he put them to death; but it is especially noted that he spared their children, in obedience to the humane law in Deuteronomy, which forbade a man's offspring being punished for their father's crime.1 David had felt himself compelled by popular opinion to give up the sons of Saul to death for their father's offence, and the sons of Naboth had been killed with their father; but a better tone of feeling was slowly awaking." Edom had been independent for the last fifty years, but Amaziah determined once more to subdue it. Summoning the whole muster of fighting men of Judah, therefore, he invaded its territory, and defeated its army in the Salt Valley, at the south of the Dead Sea. Utterly worsted, the Edomites were incapable of any further active resistance. Under a late king they had built or rather excavated a new capital in one of the southern defiles of their mountains-the strange rock-hewn city of Selah-" the rock," or Petra. Lying, as it did, more than 4,000 feet above the level of the Mediteranean, at a distance of about 70 miles from the lower end of the Dead Sea, and approached only by a series of ascents, they fancied they were secure in its shelter against foreign attacks. Dwelling literally in "the clefts of the rock," they boasted in their pride that no one could bring them down from their high retreat. But Amaziah resolved to make it his own. By a bold march he seized and 1 Deut. xxiv. 16. If this book be so late a production how is it thus referred to in Kings? See it advocated by Jeremiah and Ezekiel at a later time, Jer. xxxi. 30. Ezek. xviii. 23. Since the reign of Jehoram of Judah. 4 Obad. i. 3. plundered it; changing its name to Joktheel-in uoble confession that it had been " subdued by God." Yet the war must have been marked by a ferocity equal to that of any of the nations round. Ten thousand Edomites had been killed in the battle at the Dead Sea, but 10,000 prisoners who had been taken, were marched on to Petra and there hurled over the precipices and "broken in pieces." Rich plunder of flocks and herds, and probably of other forms of wealth, rewarded and increased the vain glory of the conqueror. Unfortunately for himself, he carried off their gods, instead of destroying them, as David had done with those of the Philistines. Brought to Jerusalem, they proved his ruin. Tempted, one knows not how, to do so, he adopted them as the objects of his own worship, and burned incense before them; thus destroying his position among his subjects by the reintroduction of idolatry-especially that of the discredited gods of a people whom Jehovah had overthrown and whom they themselves abhorred. Amaziah had hired a vast number of mercenary troops from Israel to help him in his enterprise, but having been warned by a prophet that their presence would be hurtful, since Ephraim dishonoured Jehovah by worshipping the calves, he dismissed them, forfeiting the 100 talents he had paid for their assistance. Enraged at this affront, they had avenged it on their way back, by plundering the cities of Judah through which they passed; 3,000 men falling in defence of their homes. Nothing would 99 1 2 Chron. xxv. 11, 12. In 2 Kings xiv. 7, the name Joktheel is said to have continued "unto this day." As Amaziah's conquest, however, was lost in the reign of Ahaz, less than a century after the narrative in the Book of Kings must have been written very soon indeed after the event. This is to be noted. satisfy Amaziah but war with Joash to retrieve his honour, thus wounded. Confident in his victorious army, he would listen to no dissuasion, though Joash with kindly but half contemptuous irony strove to show him his folly. "The thistle of Lebanon," said he, "sent to the cedar of Lebanon, demanding its daughter as wife to the thistle's son; but presently a wild beast, chancing to pass by, trode the vain thistle under foot."1 "Abide at home," added he; "why shouldst thou meddle, to thy hurt." Such a strain of rebuke, however, only made Amaziah the more determined. He was resolved to 66 see Joash to the face," and he did so, soon after, to his grief. A battle fought on the borders, at Beth-shemesh, resulted in his utter defeat; he himself being taken prisoner. His army being dispersed, Jerusalem lay open to Joash. Thither therefore he marched, taking the captive Amaziah with him. Once more the holy city felt the calamities of war. The temple and the palace were sacked; hostages taken; the city plundered; and its wall broken down for a space of about 600 feet. But Amaziah was treated with a generosity rare in that age. Instead of dethroning him and annexing his kingdom, Joash restored him; contented with the glory of having been the first king of Israel who had taken Jerusalem. Amaziah lived fifteen years after his captor, but the deep misery he had brought on the land was never forgotten, and popular discontent at last broke out in an open revolt of Jerusalem, from which he fled to Lachish.2 Pursued thither, he was seized and put to death; the poor honour being done his remains of bringing them back "upon horses" to Jerusalem, for burial in the royal tombs. 1 2 Chron. xxv. 18, 19. A specially strong city. SAMSI-BIN B.C. 823-811. BINNIRARI, 810-872. THE HE days of Israel's deepest depression, under Jehoahaz, had driven that king to seek help from Jehovah, the God of his fathers, and his reign had, in answer, been brightened by the promise of a great deliverer. A gleam of sunshine had since then broken through the clouds, in the victories of Joash over the Syrians. But it was in his son and successor Jeroboam II., the great-grandson of Jehu-well named after the founder of the kingdom, that the prophecy received its complete fulfilment. Cultivating friendly relations with Judah, or at least safe from its attacks, holding as he still 1 Schrader points out that these figures are uncertain, since Uzziah was certainly alive in B.C. 740. There was a total eclipse of the sun, visible at Jerusalem, in 784. It was at its full about 1 p.m. Michaelis, quoted by Hitzig, Amos, p. 130. Another alse occurred in B.C. 803. 2 Kings xiii. 4, 5. |