Events proved that, in this period, at any rate, the decadence of Assyria was not due to any exhaustion of the race or impoverishment of the country, but was mainly owing to the incapacity of its kings and the lack of energy displayed by their generals. If Menuas and Argistis had again and again triumphed over the Assyrians during half a century, it was not because their bands of raw recruits were superior to the tried veterans of Rammân-nirâri in either discipline or courage. The Assyrian troops had lost none of their former valour, and their muster-roll showed no trace of diminution, but their leaders had lost the power of handling their men after the vigorous fashion of their predecessors, and showed less foresight and tenacity in conducting their campaigns. Although decimated and driven from fortress to fortress, and from province to province, hampered by the rebellions it was called upon to suppress, and distracted by civil discord, the Assyrian army still remained a strong and efficient force, ever ready to make its full power felt the moment it realised that it was being led by a sovereign capable of employing its good qualities to advantage. Tiglath-pileser had, doubtless, held a military command before ascending the throne, and had succeeded in winning the confidence of his men: as soon as he had assumed the leadership they regained their former prestige, and restored to their country that supremacy which its last three rulers had failed to maintain.*

The empire still included the original patrimony of Assur and its ancient colonies on the Upper Tigris, the districts of Mesopotamia won from the Aramæans at various epochs, the cities of Khabur, Khindanu, Laqî, and Tebabnî, and that portion of Bît-Adini which lay to the left of the Euphrates. It thus formed a compact mass capable of successfully resisting the fiercest attacks; but the buffer provinces which Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III. had grouped round their own immediate domains on the borders of Namri, of Naîri, of Melitene, and of Syria had either resumed their independence, or else had thrown in their lot with the states against which they had been intended to watch. The Aramaean tribes never let slip an opportunity of encroaching on the southern frontier. So far, the migratory instinct which had brought them from the Arabian desert to the swamps of the Persian Gulf had met with no check. Those who first reached its shores became the founders of that nation of the Kaldâ which had, perhaps, already furnished Babylon with one of its dynasties; others had soon after followed in their footsteps, and passing beyond the Kaldâ settlement, had gradually made their way along the canals which connect the Euphrates with the Tigris till they had penetrated to the lowlands of the Uknu. Towards the middle of the eighth century B.C. they wedged themselves in between Elam and Karduniash, forming so many buffer states of varying size and influence. They extended from north to south along both banks of the Tigris, their different tribes being known as the Gambulu, the Puqudu, the Litau, the Damunu, the Ruuâ, the Khindaru, the Labdudu, the Harîlu, and the Rubuu;* the Itua, who formed the vanguard, reached the valleys of the Turnat during the reign of Kammân-nirâri III. They were defeated in 791 B.C., but obstinately renewed hostilities in 783, 782, 777, and 769; favoured by circumstances, they ended by forcing the cordon of Assyrian outposts, and by the time of Assur-nirâri had secured a footing on the Lower Zab. Close by, to the east of them, lay Namri and Media, both at that time in a state of absolute anarchy. The invasions of Menuas and of Argistis had entirely laid waste the country, and Sharduris III., the king who succeeded Argistis, had done nothing towards permanently incorporating them with Urartu.** Sharduris, while still heir-apparent to the throne, had been appointed by his father governor of the recently annexed territory belonging to Etius and the Mannai:*** he made Lununis his headquarters, and set himself to subdue the barbarians who had settled between the Kur and the Araxes. When he succeeded to the throne, about 760 B.C., the enjoyment of supreme power in no way lessened his activity. On the contrary, he at once fixed upon the sort of wide isthmus which separates the Araxes from Lake Urumiah, as the goal of his incursions, and overran the territory of the Babilu; there he carried by storm three royal castles, twenty-three cities, and sixty villages; he then fell back upon Etius, passing through Dakis, Edias, and Urmes on his way, and brought back with him 12,735 children, 46,600 women, 12,000 men capable of bearing arms, 23,335 oxen, 58,100 sheep, and 2,500 horses; these figures give some idea of the importance of his victories and the wealth of the conquered territory.

So far as we can learn, he does not seem to have attacked Khubushkia,* nor to have entered into open rivalry with Assyria; even under the rule of Assur-nirâri III. Assyria showed a bold enough front to deter any enemy from disturbing her except when forced to do so. Sharduris merely strove to recover those portions of his inheritance to which Assyria attached but little value, and his inscriptions tell us of more than one campaign waged by him with this object against the mountaineers of Melitene, about the year 758. He captured most of their citadels, one after another: Dhumeskis, Zapsas, fourteen royal castles, and a hundred towns, including Milid itself, where King Khitaruadas held his court.**

At this point two courses lay open before him. He could either continue his march westwards, and, penetrating into Asia Minor, fall upon the wealthy and industrious races who led a prosperous existence between the Halys and the Sangarios, such as the Tabal, the Chalybes, and the Phrygians, or he could turn southwards.

Deterred, apparently, by the dreary and monotonous aspect of the Asianic steppes, he chose the latter course; he crossed Mount Taurus, descended into Northern Syria about 756, and forced the Khâti to swear allegiance to him. Their inveterate hatred of the Assyrians led the Bît-Agusi to accept without much reluctance the supremacy of the only power which had shown itself capable of withstanding their triumphant progress. Arpad became for several years an unfailing support to Urartu and the basis on which its rule in Syria rested. Assur-nirâri had, as we know, at first sought to recover it, but his attempt to do so in 754 B.C. was unsuccessful, and merely served to demonstrate his own weakness: ten years later, Carchemish, Grurgum, Kummukh, Samalla, Unki, Kuî—in a word, all the Aramæans and the Khâti between the Euphrates and the sea had followed in the steps of the Agusi, and had acknowledged the supremacy of Sharduris.*

This prince must now haye been sorely tempted to adopt, on his own account, the policy of the Ninevite monarchs, and push on in the direction of Hamath, Damascus, and the Phoenician seaboard, towards those countries of Israel and Judah which were nearly coterminous with far-off Egypt. The rapidity of the victories which he had just succeeded in winning at the foot of Mount Taurus and Mount Amanus must have seemed a happy omen of what awaited his enterprise in the valleys of the Orontes and the Jordan. Although the races of southern and central Syria had suffered less than those of the north from the ambition of the Ninevite kings, they had, none the less, been sorely tried during the previous century; and it might be questioned whether they had derived courage from the humiliation of Assyria, or still remained in so feeble a state as to present an easy prey to the first invader.

The defeat inflicted on Mari by Rammân-nirâri in 803 had done but little harm to the prestige of Damascus. The influence exercised by this state from the sources of the Litany to the brook of Egypt * was based on so solid a foundation that no temporary reverse had power to weaken it.

Had the Assyrian monarch thrown himself more seriously into the enterprise, and reappeared before the ramparts of the capital in the following year, refusing to leave it till he had annihilated its armies and rased its walls to the ground, then, no doubt, Israel, Judah, the Philistines, Edom, and Ammon, seeing it fully occupied in its own defence, might have forgotten the ruthless severity of Hazael, and have plucked up sufficient courage to struggle against the Damascene yoke; as it was, Bammân-nirâri did not return, and the princes who had, perhaps, for the moment, regarded him as a possible deliverer, did not venture on any concerted action. Joash, King of Judah, and Jehoahaz, King of Israel, continued to pay tribute till both their deaths, within a year of each other, Jehoahaz in 797 B.C., and Joash in 796, the first in his bed, the second by the hand of an assassin.*

Their children, Jehoash in Israel, Amaziah in Judah, were, at first, like their parents, merely the instruments of Damascus; but before long, the conditions being favourable, they shook off their apathy and initiated a more vigorous policy, each in his own kingdom. Mari had been succeeded by a certain Ben-hadad, also a son of Hazael,* and possibly this change of kings was accompanied by one of those revolutions which had done so much to weaken Damascus: Jehoash rebelled and defeated Ben-hadad near Aphek and in three subsequent engagements, but he failed to make his nation completely independent, and the territory beyond Jordan still remained in the hands of the Syrians.** We are told that before embarking on this venture he went to consult the aged Elisha, then on his deathbed. He wept to see him in this extremity, and bending over him, cried out, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” The prophet bade him take bow and arrows and shoot from the window toward the East. The king did so, and Elisha said, “The Lord’s arrow of victory *** over Syria; for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek till thou have consumed them.”

Then he went on: “Take the arrows,” and the king took them; then he said, “Smite upon the ground,” and the king smote thrice and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, “Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it, whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.” * Amaziah, on his side, had routed the Edomites in the Valley of Salt, one of David’s former battle-fields, and had captured their capital, Sela.** Elated by his success, he believed himself strong enough to break the tie of vassalage which bound him to Israel, and sent a challenge to Jehoash in Samaria. The latter, surprised at his audacity, replied in a parable, “The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife.” But “there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trode down the thistle. Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thine heart hath lifted thee up: glory thereof and abide at home; for why shouldest thou meddle to thy hurt that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with thee?” They met near Beth-shemesh, on the border of the Philistine lowlands. Amaziah was worsted in the engagement, and fell into the power of his rival. Jehoash entered Jerusalem and dismantled its walls for a space of four hundred cubits, “from the gate of Ephraim unto the corner gate;” he pillaged the Temple, as though it had been the abode, not of Jahveh, but of some pagan deity, insisted on receiving hostages before he would release his prisoner, and returned to Samaria, where he soon after died (781 B.C.).***

Jeroboam II. completed that rehabilitation of Israel, of which his father had but sketched the outline; he maintained his suzerainty, first over Amaziah, and when the latter was assassinated at Lachish (764),* over his son, the young Azariah.** After the defeat of Ben-hadad near Aphek, Damascus declined still further in power, and Hadrach, suddenly emerging from obscurity, completely barred the valley of the Orontes against it. An expedition under Shalmaneser IV. in 773 seems to have precipitated it to a lower depth than it had ever reached before: Jeroboam was able to wrest from it, almost without a struggle, the cities which it had usurped in the days of Jehu, and Gilead was at last set free from a yoke which had oppressed it for more than a century. Tradition goes so far as to affirm that Israel reconquered the Bekaa, Hamath, and Damascus, those northern territories once possessed by David, and it is quite possible that its rivals, menaced from afar by Assyria and hard pressed at their own doors by Hadrach, may have resorted to one of those propitiatory overtures which eastern monarchs are only too ready to recognise as acts of submission. The lesser southern states, such as Ammon, the Bedâwin tribes of Hauran, and, at the opposite extremity of the kingdom, the Philistines,*** who had bowed themselves before Hazael in the days of his prosperity, now transferred their homage to Israel.

Moab alone offered any serious resistance. It had preserved its independence ever since the reign of Mesha, having escaped from being drawn into the wars which had laid waste the rest of Syria. It was now suddenly forced to pay the penalty of its long prosperity. Jeroboam made a furious onslaught upon its cities—Ar of Moab, Kir of Moab, Dibon, Medeba, Heshbon, Elealeh—and destroyed them all in succession. The Moabite forces carried a part of the population with them in their flight, and all escaped together across the deserts which enclose the southern basin of the Dead Sea. On the frontier of Edom they begged for sanctuary, but the King of Judah, to whom the Edomite valleys belonged, did not dare to shelter the vanquished enemies of his suzerain, and one of his prophets, forgetting his hatred of Israel in delight at being able to gratify his grudge against Moab, greeted them in their distress with a hymn of joy—“I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon Elealeh: for upon thy summer fruits and upon thy harvest the battle shout is fallen. And gladness is taken away and joy out of the fruitful fields; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither joyful noise; no treader shall tread out wine in the presses; I have made the vintage shout to cease. Wherefore my bowels sound like an harp for Moab, and my inward parts for Kir-Heres. And it shall come to pass, when Moab presenteth himself, when he wearieth himself upon the high place, and shall come to his sanctuary to pray, he shall not prevail!”*

This revival, like the former greatness of David and Solomon, was due not so much to any inherent energy on the part of Israel, as to the weakness of the nations on its frontiers. Egypt was not in the habit of intervening in the quarrels of Asia, and Assyria was suffering from a temporary eclipse. Damascus had suddenly collapsed, and Hadrach or Mansuati, the cities which sought to take its place, found themselves fully employed in repelling the intermittent attacks of the Assyrian; the Hebrews, for a quarter of a century, therefore, had the stage to themselves, there being no other actors to dispute their possession of it. During the three hundred years of their existence as a monarchy they had adopted nearly all the laws and customs of the races over whom they held sway, and by whom they were completely surrounded. The bulk of the people devoted themselves to the pasturing and rearing of cattle, and, during the better part of the year, preferred to live in tents, unless war rendered such a practice impossible.* They had few industries save those of the potter** and the smith,*** and their trade was almost entirely in the hands of foreigners.

We find, however, Hebrew merchants in Egypt,* at Tyre, and in Coele-Syria, and they were so numerous at Damascus that they requested that a special bazaar might be allotted to them, similar to that occupied by the merchants of Damascus in Samaria from time immemorial.**

The Hebrew monarchs had done their best to encourage this growing desire for trade. It was only the complicated state of Syrian politics that prevented them from following the example of Solomon, and opening communications by sea with the far-famed countries of Ophir, either in competition with the Phoenicians or under their guidance. Indeed, as we have seen, Jehoshaphat, encouraged by his alliance with the house of Omri, tried to establish a seagoing fleet, but found that peasants could not be turned into sailors at a day’s notice, and the vessel built by him at Eziongeber was wrecked before it left the harbour.

In appearance, the Hebrew towns closely resembled the ancient Canaanite cities. Egyptian influences still predominated in their architecture, as may be seen from what is still left of the walls of Lachish, and they were fortified in such a way as to be able to defy the military engines of besiegers. This applies not only to capitals, like Jerusalem, Tirzah, and Samaria, but even to those towns which commanded a road or mountain pass, the ford of a river, or the entrance to some fertile plain; there were scores of these on the frontiers of the two kingdoms, and in those portions of their territory which lay exposed to the attacks of Damascus, Moab, Edom, or the Philistines.* The daily life of the inhabitants was; to all intents, the same as at Arpad, Sidon, or Gaza; and the dress, dwellings, and customs of the upper and middle classes cannot have differed in any marked degree from those of the corresponding grades of society in Syria.

The men wore over their tunic a fringed kaftan, with short sleeves, open in front, a low-crowned hat, and sandals or shoes of pliant leather; * they curled their beards and hair, painted their eyes and cheeks, and wore many jewels; while their wives adopted all the latest refinements in vogue in the harems of Damascus, Tyre, or Nineveh.** Descendants of ancient families paid for all this luxury out of the revenues of the wide domains they had inherited; others kept it up by less honourable means, by usury, corruption, and by the exercise of a ruthless violence towards neighbours who were unable to defend themselves.

Illustration: 191.jpg WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF JUDÆA

The king himself set them an evil example, and did not hesitate to assassinate one of his subjects in order that he might seize a vineyard which he coveted;* it was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the nobles of Ephraim “sold the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes;” ** that they demanded gifts of wheat, and “turned the needy from their right” when they sat as a jury “at the gate.” *** From top to bottom of the social ladder the stronger and wealthier oppressed those who were weaker or poorer than themselves, leaving them with no hope of redress except at the hands of the king.****

Unfortunately, the king, when he did not himself set the example of oppression, seldom possessed the resources necessary to make his decisions effective. True, he was chief of the most influential family in either Judah or Israel, a chief by divine appointment, consecrated by the priests and prophets of Jahveh, a priest of the Lord,* and he was master in his own city of Jerusalem or Samaria, but his authority did not extend far beyond the walls.

It was not the old tribal organisation that embarrassed him, for the secondary tribes had almost entirely given up their claims to political independence. The division of the country into provinces, a consequence of the establishment of financial districts by Solomon, had broken them up, and they gradually gave way before the two houses of Ephraim and Judah; but the great landed proprietors, especially those who held royal fiefs, enjoyed almost unlimited power within their own domains. They were, indeed, called on to render military service, to furnish forced labour, and to pay certain trifling dues into the royal treasury;* but, otherwise, they were absolute masters in their own domains, and the sovereign was obliged to employ force if he wished to extort any tax or act of homage which they were unwilling to render. For this purpose he had a standing army distributed in strong detachments along the frontier, but the flower of his forces was concentrated round the royal residence to serve as a body-guard. It included whole companies of foreign mercenaries, like those Cretan and Carian warriors who, since the time of David, had kept guard round the Kings of Judah;** these, in time of war,*** were reinforced by militia, drawn entirely from among the landed proprietors, and the whole force, when commanded by an energetic leader, formed a host capable of meeting on equal terms the armies of Damascus, Edom, or Moab, or even the veterans of Egypt and Assyria.

The reigning prince was hereditary commander-in-chief, but the sharzaba, or captain of the troops, often took his place, as in the time of David, and thereby became the most important person in the kingdom. More than one of these officers had already turned against their sovereign the forces which he had entrusted, to them, and these revolts, when crowned with success, had, on various occasions, in Israel at any rate, led to a change of dynasty: Omri had been shar zaba when he mutinied against Zimri, the assassin of Elah, and Jehu occupied the same position when Elisha deputed him to destroy the house of Omri.

The political constitutions of Judah and Israel were, on the whole, very similar to those of the numerous states which shared the territory of Syria between them, and their domestic history gives us a fairly exact idea of the revolutions which agitated Damascus, Hamath, Carchemish, Arpad, and the principalities of Amanos and Lebanon about the same period. It would seem, however, that none of these other nations possessed a literary or religious life of any great intensity. They had their archives, it is true, in which were accumulated documents relating to their past history, their rituals of theology and religious worship, their collections of hymns and national songs; but none of these have survived, and the very few inscriptions that have come down to us merely show that they had nearly all of them adopted the alphabet invented by the Phoenicians. The Israelites, initiated by them into the art of writing, lost no time in setting down, in their turn, all they could recall of the destinies of their race from the creation of the world down to the time in which they lived. From the beginning of the monarchical epoch onwards, their scribes collected together in the Book of the Wars of the Lord, the Book of Jashar, and in other works the titles of which have not survived, lyrics of different dates, in which nameless poets had sung the victories and glorious deeds of their national heroes, such as the Song of the Well, the Hymn of Moses, the triumphal Ode of Deborah, and the blessing of Jacob.* They were able to draw upon traditions which preserved the memory of what had taken place in the time of the Judges;** and when that patriarchal form of government was succeeded by a monarchy, they had narratives of the ark of the Lord and its wanderings, of Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon,*** not to mention the official records which, since then, had been continuously produced and accumulated by the court historians.****

It may be that more than one writer had already endeavoured to evolve from these materials an Epie of Jahveh and His faithful people, but in the second half of the IXth century B.C., perhaps in the time of Jehoshaphat, a member of the tribe of Judah undertook to put forth a fresh edition.*

He related how God, after creating the universe out of chaos, had chosen His own people, and had led them, after trials innumerable, to the conquest of the Promised Land. He showed, as he went on, the origin of the tribes identified with the children of Israel, and the covenants made by Jahveh with Moses in the Arabian desert; while accepting the stories connected with the ancient sanctuaries of the north and east at Shechem, Bethel, Peniel, Mahanaim, and Succoth, it was at Hebron in Judah that he placed the principal residence of Abraham and his descendants. His style, while simple and direct, is at the same time singularly graceful and vivacious; the incidents he gives are carefully selected, apt and characteristic, while his narrative passes from scene to scene without trace of flagging, unburdened by useless details, and his dialogue, always natural and easy, rises without effort from the level of familiar conversation to heights of impassioned eloquence. His aim was not merely to compile the history of his people: he desired at the same time to edify them, by showing how sin first came into the world through disobedience to the commandments of the Most High, and how man, prosperous so long as he kept to the laws of the covenant, fell into difficulties as soon as he transgressed or failed to respect them. His concept of Jahveh is in the highest degree a concrete one: he regards Him as a Being superior to other beings, but made like unto them and moved by the same passions. He shows anger and is appeased, displays sorrow and repents Him of the evil.* When the descendants of Noah build a tower and a city, He draws nigh to examine what they have done, and having taken account of their work, confounds their language and thus prevents them from proceeding farther.** He desires, later on, to confer a favour on His servant Abraham: He appears to him in human form, and eats and drinks with him.*** Sodom and Gomorrah had committed abominable iniquities, the cry against them was great and their sin very grievous: but before punishing them, He tells Abraham that He will “go down and see whether they have done according to the cry of it which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know.” ****

Elsewhere He wrestles a whole night long with Jacob;* or falls upon Moses, seeking to kill him, until appeased by Zipporah, who casts the blood-stained foreskin of her child at her husband’s feet.** This book, though it breathes the spirit of the prophets and was perhaps written in one of their schools, did not, however, include all the current narratives, and omitted many traditions that were passing from lip to lip; moreover, the excessive materialism of its treatment no longer harmonised with that more idealised concept of the Deity which had already begun to prevail. Consequently, within less than a century of its appearance, more than one version containing changes and interpolations in the narrative came to be circulated,*** till a scribe of Ephraim, who flourished in the time of Jeroboam II., took up the subject and dealt with it in a different fashion.****

Putting on one side the primitive accounts of the origin of the human race which his predecessors had taken pleasure in elaborating, he confined his attention solely to events since the birth of Abraham;* his origin is betrayed by the preference he displays for details calculated to flatter the self-esteem of the northern tribes. To his eyes, Joseph is the noblest of all the sons of Jacob, before whom all the rest must bow their heads, as to a king; next to Joseph comes Reuben, to whom—rather than to Judah**—he gives the place as firstborn. He groups his characters round Bethel and Shechem, the sanctuaries of Israel; even Abraham is represented as residing, not at Hebron in Judea, but at Beersheba, a spot held in deep veneration by pilgrims belonging to the ten tribes.*** It is in his concept of the Supreme Being, however, that he differs most widely from his predecessors. God is, according to him, widely removed from ordinary humanity. He no longer reveals Himself at all times and in all places, but works rather by night, and appears to men in their dreams, or, when circumstances require His active interference, is content to send His angels rather than come in His own person.****

* Budde seems to have proved conclusively that the Elohist did not write any part of the primitive history of mankind.

** Gen. xxxvii. 21, 22, 29, 30; xlii. 22, 27; whereas in Gen. xliii. 3, 8-10, where the narrative is from the pen of the Jehovist, it is Judah that plays the principal part: it is possible that, in Gen. xxxvii. 21, Reuben has been substituted in the existing text for Judah.

*** Gen. xxi. 31, 33; xxii. 19; the importance of Beersheba as a holy place resorted to by pilgrims from the northern kingdom is shown in 1 Kings xix. 3, and Amos v. 5; viii. 14.

**** Gen. xx. 3-8; xxviii. 11-15; xxxi 24; Numb. xxii. 8-12, 20.

Indeed, such cases of active interference are of rare occurrence, and He prefers to accomplish His purpose through human agents, who act unconsciously, or even in direct contravention of their own clearly, expressed intentions.* Moreover it was only by degrees that He revealed His true nature and title; the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, had called Him Elohim, or “the gods,” and it was not until the coming of Moses that He disclosed His real name of Jahveh to His worshippers.**