that a confidence of victory is not always followed by the attainment of it. * The people having attributed the victory of the Israelites to their gods, as gods of the hills, advised their leader to draw them into the plain, and instead of the useless kings, to put as many captains in their place. He listened to their voice, and numbered again an army like the army he had lost, horse for horse, and chariot for chariot. It was at the return of the year that he went up a second time with this formidable host against Samaria, where, as it is emphatically said, "The children of Israel pitched before them like two little flocks of kids, while the Syrians filled the country." The battle was as fatal to their leader as before; a hundred thousand of his footmen were slain in one day; and of those that fled away to Aphek, a wall fell and destroyed twenty-seven thousand of them. t The proud Ben-hadad, who had boasted that all Samaria would not afford sufficient earth to yield a handful to each of his followers, was reduced to sue for mercy, in sackcloth and ashes, and bound with ropes about his head as a captive; so that he must then have found the diffe *See 1 Kings, xx. throughout, and Joseph. Ant. Jud. 1. viii. c. 14. † 1 Kings, xx. rence between the boast at girding on his harness, and that at putting it off. By this act of humiliation he obtained, however, not only pardon, but the honour of riding in the same chariot with the king himself. A covenant of peace was concluded, in which Ben-hadad said unto Ahab, "The cities which my father took from thy father, I will restore, and thou shalt make streets for thee in Damascus, as my father made in Samaria." The learned are divided as to whether these were streets, or palaces, or market-places, which were thus to be permitted to the king of Samaria to build in Damascus; but all are agreed that it was a privilege which marked the subjection of Ben-hadad to Ahab. * Like more modern treaties of eternal friendship and alliance, this covenant of peace was soon broken, and in a terrible battle that was fought for the recovery of Ramoth Gilead from the Syrians, Ahab, though he had disguised himself to avoid death, was slain by an arrow from a bow drawn at a venture. His body was brought, however, to Samaria, to be laid in the sepulchre of Omri, his father, the founder of the city; and in a reference to the acts of his life, the other cities which he built, and the ivory * Anc. Un. Hist. vol. ii. p. 306. 8vo. house which he made, (probably in this his capital of Samaria itself,) are numbered among the works recorded of him in the books of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. * 66 The third time of this Ben-hadad, the Syrian king, opposing himself to Samaria, was on the occasion of Joram shutting himself up therein, and depending on the strength of its walls. "But Ben-hadad," says the Jewish historian, supposed he should take the city, if not by his engines of war, yet that he should overcome the Samaritans by famine and the want of necessaries, and so he brought his army upon them, and besieged the city." The result indeed. was as had been anticipated; for the Scriptures say: "And there was a great famine in Samaria, and behold they besieged it until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung† for five pieces of silver." The incident related afterwards, still heightens the picture of the distress to which this siege must have reduced them: "And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king. And he said, If the * 1 Kings, xxii. 39. Joseph. Ant. Jud. 1. ix. c. 4. s. 4. Josephus says, that this dove's dung was used as a substitute for salt. Ant. Jud. 1. 9. c. 4. s. 4. Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barn-floor, or out of the winepress ? And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him and she hath hid her son." * : In the reign of Hoshea, one of the subsequent kings of Samaria, and when Ahaz was king of Judah, Shalmanezer, the Assyrian monarch to whom Hoshea was tributary, came up against Samaria to punish him for having sent messengers to the king of Egypt, and for having failed in making the yearly presents which he had formerly done. The Scriptures, in relating this event, briefly say, "Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and in Habor, by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes." It is added, "And the king of * 2 Kings, vi. 26-29. Josephus also quotes Nicolaus of Damascus, who, in his History of Hadad, mentions this laying waste of Samaria. Ant. 1. 7. c. 5. s. 2. 2 Kings, xvii. 5, 6. Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria, instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof." Josephus confirms this account of the carrying away the ten tribes of Israel into captivity by Shalmanezer, and adds also, that "when he had removed these people out of this their land, he transplanted other nations out of Cuthah, a place so called, (for there is [still] a river of that name in Persia,) into Samaria, and into the country of the Israelites.” * The utter ruin of the power of Samaria in this captivity of her people, seems to be alluded to by the Prophet Hosea, when he says, "as for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water." It is thought by some, that the city was then reduced to a heap of stones, and Micah is referred to as saying so; but though this was the threat made against it by the word which came to the Prophet in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Ezekiah, kings of Judah, or about the period of these sieges, its desolation is not mentioned as being made so complete as to "become as an heap of the field, and as *Joseph. Ant. Jud. 1. ix. c. 14. s. 1. |