Asa adhered, through the whole of his long reign, to the policy of encouraging hostility be tween the two northern kingdoms ; and the first Benhadad had such a career of success that his son found himself in a condition to hope for an entire conquest of Israel. His formidable invasions wrought an entire change in the mind of Jehosha phat (1 Kings xxii. 44), who saw that if Israel was swallowed up by Syria there would be no safety for Judah. We may conjecture that this consideration determined him to unite the two royal families ; for no common cause would have induced so reli gious a king to select for his son's wife Athaliah the daughter of Jezebel. The age of Ahaziah, who was sprung from this marriage, forces us to place it as early as B.C. 912, which is the third year of Jehoshaphat and sixth of Ahab. Late in Ins reign Jehoshaphat threw himself most cordially (1 Kings xxii. 4) into the defence of Ahab, and by so doing probably saved Israel from a foreign yoke. Another mark of the low state into which both kingdoms were falling, is, that after Ahab's death the Moab ites refused their usual tribute to Israel, and (as far as can be made out from the ambig-uous words of 2 Kings iii. 27) the united force of the two kingdoms failed of doing more than irritate them. Soon after, in the reign of Jehoram son of Jehosha phat, the Edomites followed the example, and established their independence. This event pos sibly engaged the whole force of Judah, and hin dered it from succouring Samaria during the cruel siege which it sustained from Benhadad II., in the reign of Jehoram son of Ahab. The declining years and health of the king of Syria gave a short respite to Israel ; but, in B.C. 885, Hazacl, by de feating the united IIebrew armies, commenced the career of conquest and harassing invasion by which he made Israel like the dust by threshing.' Even under Jehu he subdued the trans-Jordanic tribes (2 Kings x. 32). Aftenvards, since he took the town of Gath (2 Kings xii. 17) and prepared to attack Jerusalem—an attack which Jehoash king of Judah averted only by strictly following Asa's precedent—it is manifest that all the passes and chief forts of the country west of the Jordan must have been in his hand. Indeed, as he is said to have left to Jehoahaz only fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen,' it would seem that Israel was strictly a conquered province, in which Hazael dictated (as the English to the native rajahs of India) what military force should be kept up. From this thraldom Israel was delivered by some unexplained agency. We are told merely that Jehovah gave to Israel a saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians ; and the children of Israel dwelt in their tents as before time,' 2 Kings xiii. 5. It is allowable to conjec ture that the (apparently unknown) deliverer was the Assyrian monarchy, which, assaulting Hazael towards the end of the reign of Jehoahaz, entirely drew away the Syrian armies. That it was some urgent, powerful, and continued pressure, consider ing the great strength which the empire of Damas cus had attained, seems clear from the sudden weakness of Syria through the reigms of Jehoash and Jeroboam II., the former of whom thrice de feated Benhadad III. and recovered the cities of Israel ;' the latter not only regained the full terri tory of the ten tribes, but made himself master (for a time at least) of Damascus and Hamath. How entirely the friendship of Israel and Judah had been caused and cemented by their common fear of Syria is proved by the fact that no sooner is the power of Damascus broken than new war breaks out between the two kingdoms, which ended in the plunder of Jerusalem by Jehoash, who also broke down its walls and carried off hostages ; after which there is no more alliance between Judah and Israel. The empire of Damascus seems to have been en tirely dissolved under the son of Hazael, and no mention is made of its kings for eighty years or more. When Pekah, son of Remaliah, reigned in Samaria, Rezin, as king of Damascus, made a last but ineffectual effort for its independence.
The same Assyrian power which had doubtless so seriously shaken, and perhaps temporarily over turned, the kingdom of Damascus, was soon to be felt by Israel. Menahem was invaded by Pul (the first sovereign of Nineveh whose name we know), and was made tributary. His successor, Tiglath pileser, in the reign of Pekah, son of Remaliah, carried captive the eastern and northern tribes of Israel (i.e., perhaps all their chief men as hos tages ?), and soon after slew Rezin, the ally of Pekah, and subdued Damascus. The following emperor, Shalmaneser, besieged and captured Sa maria, and terminated the kingdom of Israel, B.c. 721.
This branch of the Hebrew monarchy suffered far greater and more rapid reverses than the other. From the accession of Jeroboam to the middle of Baasha's reign it probably increased in power ; it then waned with the growth of the Damascene empire ; it struggled hard against it under Ahab and Jehoram, but sank lower and lower ; it was dismembered under Jehu, and made subject under Jehoahaz. From B.C. 940 to B.C. 850, is, as
nearly as can be ascertained, the period of de pression ; and from B.c. 91.1 to B. c. 830 that of friendship or alliance with Judah. But aftei (about) B.C. 85o Syria began to decline, and Israel soon shot out rapidly ; so that Joash and his son Jeroboam appear, of all Hebrew monarchs, to come next to David and Solomon. How long this burst of prosperity lasted does not distinctly appear ; but it would seem that entire dominion Over the ten tribes was held until Pekah received the first blow from the Assyrian conqueror.
Besides that which was a source of weakness to Israel from the beginning, viz., the schism of the crown with the whole ecclesiastical body, other causes may be discerned which made the ten tribes less powerful, in comparison with the two, than might have been expected. The marriage of Ahab to Jezebel brought with it no political auvantages at all commensurate with the direct moral mischief, to say nothing of the spiritual evil ; and the re action against the worship of Baal was a most ruin ous atonement for the sin. To suppress the monstrous iniquity, the prophets let loose the remorseless Jehu, who, not satisfied with the blood of Ahab's wife, grandson, and seventy sons, murdered first the king of Judah himself, and next forty-two youthful and innocent princes of his house ; while, strange to tell, the daughter of Jezebel gained by his deed the throne of Judah, and perpetrated a new massacre. The horror of such crimes must have fallen heavily on Jehu, and have caused a wide-spread disaffection among his own subjects. Add to this, that the Phoenicians must have deeply resented his proceedings ; so that we get a very sufficient clue to the prostration of Israel under the foot of Hazael during the reign of Jehu and his son.
Another and a more abiding cause of political debility in the ten tribes was found in the imper fect consolidation of the inhabitants into a single nation. Since those who lived east of the Jordan retained, to a great extent at least, their pastoral habits, their union with the rest could never have been very firm ; and when a king was neither strong independently of them, nor had good hereditary pretensions, they were not likely to con tribute much to his power. After their conquest of the Hagarenes and the depression of the Moab hes and Ammonites by David, they had free room to spread eastward ; and many of their chief men may have become wealthy in flocks and herds (like Machir the son of Ammiel, of Lodebar, and Barzillai the Gileadite, 2 Sam. xvii. 27), over whom the authority of the Israelitish crown would naturally be precarious ; while west of the Jordan the agrarian law of Moses made it difficult or im possible for a landed nobility to form itself, which could be formidable to the royal authority. That the Arab spirit of freedom was rooted in the east ern tribes, may perhaps be inferred from the case of the Rechabites, who would neither live in houses nor plant vines ; undoubtedly, like some of the Nabathxans, lest by becoming settled and agricul tural they should be enslaved. Yet the need of im posing this law on his descendants would not have been felt by Jonadab, had not an opposite ten dency been rising—that of agricultural settlement.
On another point our information is defective, viz., what proportion of the inhabitants of the land consisted of foreign slaves, or subject and de graded castes [SotomoN]. Such as belonged to tribes who practised circumcision [CiRcumcistoil would with less difficulty become incorporated with the Israelites ; but the Philistines who were intermixed with Israel, by resisting this ordinance, must have continued heterogeneous. In Kings xv. 27 ; xvi. 15, we find the town of Gibbethon in the hand of the Philistines during the reigns of Na dab, I3aasha, and Zimri : nor is it stated that they were finally expelled. Gibbethon being a Levitical town, it might be conjectured that it had been occur. pied by the Philistines when the Levites emigrated into Judah ; but the possibilites here a.re many.
Although the priests and Levites nearly dis appeared out of Israel, prophets were perhaps even more numerous and active there than in Judah ; and Ahijah, whose prediction first endangered Jeroboam (1 Kings xi. 29-40), lived in honour at Shiloh to his dying day (xiv. 2). Obadiah alone saved one hundred prophets of Jehovah from the rage of Jezebel (xviii. 13). Possibly their extra social character freed them from the restraint im posed on priests and Levites ; and while they felt less bound to the formal rites of the Law, the kings of Israel were also less jealous of them. In fact, just as a great cathedral in Christendom tends to elevate the priestly above the prophetical functions, so, it is possible, did the proximity of Jerusalem ; and the prophet may have moved most freely where he came least into contact with the priest. That most inauspicious event—the rupture of Israel with Judah —may thus have been overruled for the highest blessing of the world, by a fuller develop ment of the prophetical spirit.—F. W. N.