be. By his deed, or another's, the King died, not of his illness, but by an apparent accident in his bath; and Hazael was at once raised to the throne of Syria. Under him Damascus became again a formidable power. He, in spite of his humble anticipation of himself, turned out to be all that the Prophet had foretold, "mighty "and of great power."1 He was worshipped almost with divine honors by his own countrymen even at the time of the Christian era.2 The revolution which had called Jehu away from the siege of Ramoth-Gilead, and which had broken the alliance between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, opened the way for his invasion of Palestine. The trans-Jordanic territory was laid waste, its strongholds burnt, its population massacred; and through the reign of Jehu's successor, the fortunes of Israel were depressed yet lower.

mortal

At last, the brighter day began to dawn. Already in the time of Jehoahaz there was a promise of a great deliverer. In the days of Joash, Elisha himself foresaw the first turn of the fortune which he had so mournfully predicted. The last scene of his life showed how deeply the Syrian war colored all his thoughts, as well as those of the King. When he was Meeting now struck with his sickness, the with Joash. young Joash came to visit the aged seer who had placed his grandfather on the throne, and wept over his face, and lamented that he who had been his father, and who had been to him a defence against the chariots and horsemen of Syria, was now to depart. The Prophet roused himself from his sick-bed, and bade the King take the bow, the favorite weapon

1 2 Kings xii. 17; xiii. 3.
2 Josephus, Ant. ix. 4, § 6.
22 Kings xiii. 4, 5.

VOL. II.

25

4 See the paraphrase of Josephus. Ant. ix. 8, § 6.

of the chiefs of Israel, - and then through the window open towards the eastern quarter, whence the hostile armies of Syria came, the youthful King, with the aged hands of Elisha planted on his hands, shot1 once, twice, thrice, upon the ground outside. The energy of the youth was not equal to the energy of the expiring Prophet. He ought to have gone on shooting till he had exhausted the quiver. It would have been a sign and pledge of the entire destruction of his enemies. But still the tide was turned. Thrice, according to the augury, was the victory gained on the scene of the former victory of Ahab, and the conquered territory of Israel was reconquered; and Joash was able to compare himself to the cedar of Lebanon, towering high above the thistles that grew, and above the wild beasts that wandered, under his shade. The battle of Bethshemesh opened the way for him to Jerusalem itself, and alone of all the Kings of Israel he returned captor and plunderer of the chief city of the rival kingdom. But this was not all. Elisha was now gone; had he lived to see the successor of Joash, his dying wish would have been more than satisfied. The long-foretold deliverer at last arose, the greatest of all the Kings of Samaria. As if with a forecast of his future glory, he was named after the founder of the kingdom,

Jeroboam
II.

Jeroboam II. We know little of Jeroboam's
character or of his wars, except the results.
The whole northern
Damascus was taken,

But the results were prodigious.
empire of Solomon was restored.

and the dominion was once more extended northward

to the remote Hamath at the source of the Orontes,

1 So Josephus.

22 Kings xiv. 8-15.

3 Ibid. xiv. 28; Amos vi. 14. "Hamath, of or for Judah." This

last addition is explained in various ways: 1. formerly belonging to Judah ; 2. for Judah; 3. read Zobah (Ewald, iii. 562, comparing 2 Chr. viii. 3); 4.

and southward to the valley of willows which divided Moab from Edom.

Edom belonged to Judah, but Moab had been long dependent on Israel, and had owned its sub- Conquest of jection by paying immense herds of sheep and Moab. lambs as its annual tribute to the northern kingdom. It had broken through this custom after the death of Ahad; and as the troubles of Israel went on increasing, Moabite troops had made yearly incursions into the Israelite territory, and finally settled north of the Arnon within the Israelite territory. It was this tract which Jeroboam reconquered; and in regaining it, he seems to have poured in a host of Arab tribes who swept the rich land of Moab itself, and reduced it to entire submission. There was a dreadful record a handed down to after-times, which turns on the horrors of the night when Moab fell or was to fall before some mighty conqueror: "In the night, Ar of Moab is laid "waste and brought to silence; in the night, Kir of "Moab is laid waste and brought to silence." The high-places, the streets, the extreme borders of the country resound with howlings and wailings. "The "women are huddled together like frightened birds "at the fords of the Arnon." The vineyards, and cornfields, and pastures are destroyed by heathen tribes. The Prophet, whoever he be, is moved to tender pity

(as in the Syriac and other versions) ago. But now," &c.; and so Jereomit the word. miah (xlviii. 47) still further applies

1 Isa. xv. 7; perhaps also Amos it to his time. Ewald (Propheten, i. vi. 14.

2 2 Kings iii. 4.

3 It is preserved both in Isaiah and Jeremiah. That it is from an older prophet is distinctly stated by Isaiah (xvi. 13), "This is the word that the Lord spoke concerning Moab long

231) believes it to be by a Prophet of Judah, on account of xvi. 1-5. Still more probable is the conjecture of Hitzig, identifying it with the prophecy of Jonah mentioned in 2 Kings xiv. 25.

at the sight, and hopes that, in the old ancestral connection with the house of David, Moab may yet be not too proud to seek a covert from the face of the spoiler. It may be that this is the very prophecy by which Jeroboam's empire was inaugurated, "accordJonah. "ing to the word of the Lord, which He spoke "by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of "Amittai." This Prophet, who was to Jeroboam II. what Ahijah had been to Jeroboam I., and what Elisha had been to Jehu, though slightly mentioned in the history, has been already thrice brought before us in Jewish tradition, and conveys an instruction reaching far beyond his times. The child of the widow of Zarephath, the boy who attended Elijah to the wilderness, the youth who anointed Jehu, was believed to be the same as he whose story is related to us in the book of unknown authorship, of unknown date, of disputed meaning, but of surpassing interest, — the Book of Jonah. Putting aside all that is doubtful, it stands out of the history of those wars and conquests with a truthfulness to human nature and a loftiness of religious sentiment that more than vindicate its place in the Sacred Canon. First look at the vivid touches of the narrative even in detail. We see the Prophet hasting down from the hills of Galilee to the one Israelite port of Joppa. He sinks into the deep sleep of the wearied traveller as soon as he gets on board after his hurried journey. The storm rises; the Tyrian sailors are all astir with terror and activity. They attack the unknown passenger with their "brief

1 2 Kings xiv. 25.

2

2 The word "And," with which the book commences, indicates a different origin from that of the earlier Prophetical Books. It is elsewhere only

used at the commencement of the Books of Leviticus, Numbers, Joshua, Kings, Ezekiel, Baruch, and Mac cabees.

3 Jonah i. 5 (Heb.).

"accumulated inquiries." "Why hath this happened "to us? What doest thou? Whence art thou? "What is thy country? Of what people art thou?"1 The good seamen, heathens as they are, struggle against the dreadful necessity which Jonah puts before them. They row with a force which seems to dig up the waves under their efforts. But higher and higher, higher and higher, the sea surges against them, like a living creature gaping for its prey. The victim is at last thrown in, and its rage ceases.2 This is the first deliverance, and it is the Divine blessing on the honest hearts and active hands of "those that go "down to the sea in ships, and do their business in 66 great waters."

Then comes the unexpected rescue of the Prophet. He vanishes from view for three long days and nights. One of the huge monsters which are described in the Psalms as always sporting in the strange sea, and which in the early Christian paintings is represented as a vast dragon, receives him into its capacious maw. His own hymn of thanksgiving succeeds. He seems to be in the depths of the unseen world; the river of the ocean whirls him round in its vast eddies; the masses of seaweed enwrap him as in grave-clothes; the rocky roots of the mountains as they descend into the sea appear above him, as if closing the gates of earth against his return. The mighty fish is but the transi tory instrument. That on which the Prophet in his hymn lays stress is not the mode of his escape, but the escape itself.5

1 All this is well brought out by Dr Pusey on Jonah, pp. 251, 252. 2 This is well given in Josephus, Ant. ix. 10, § 2).

3 Ps. civ. 26.

4 Jonah ii. 3, 5, 6.

5 Unless we have previously determined the question, whether the Book of Jonah is intended by the sacred writer to be a literal history, or an