H. E. Kyle. BEN-DEKER (-iR^'I? 'son of Deker'; t/lAs PiJxaj B, i'i6j Pi7xa/3 Luc, vlb^ .iaicdp A. Deker perhaps means sharp, piercivij in.itrument , as in Talniua). — Patronymic of one of Solomon's twelve com- misRariat officers (1 K 4»). C. F. BuRNEY.
BENE-BERAK (pi? -js), Jos 19".— A town of Dan near Jeliud (el-Yehudii/eh), now the village Ibn Ibrdk, E. of Jaffa. See ^WP vol. ii. sheet xiii.
C. R. CONDKR.
BENEFACTOR Lk 22« only, 'they that ex-
ercist: authority over them (the Gentiles) are eall'd benefactors.' The word is an exact tr" of
the Gr. Ei/f/ry^t, a title of honour borne by two of the Gr. kings of Egypt before Christ's day, Ptolemy III. (B.C. 247-222) and Ptolemy ix. (B.C. 147-117). Hence RV properly spells with a capital, ' Benefactors.' J. Hastings.
BENE-JAAKAN (lija? •»). — A station in the joumeyings, mentioned Nu 33"- " (cf . Dt 10', and see Beeroth-bene-Jaakan). A. T. Chapman.
BENEVOLENCE.— 1 Co 7* only, ' Let the hus- band render unto the wife due b. Where b. is used in the sense of afl'ection. This tr°, which is due to Tindale, follows TK t^v 6(pei\ojjLif7iD eSmai' ; but all edd. give simply ttji/ it/xtXrif, whence KV ' her due'; cf. Rheiins 'his dette.' The Gr. word eCvoia thus occurs only in Eph 6', ' goodwill ' EV ; the verb is found Mt 5* 'Agree with (tadi fu»ou>') thine adversary quickly.' J. Ha.stincs.
BEN-GEBER ("yna, AV '8on of Geber,' which see). — Patronymic of one of Solomon's 12 com- missariat officers who had charge of a district N.E. of the Jordan (1 K 4»). C. F. BCRNEY.
BEN-HADAD (Tiq*!?. "'*♦ 'A.Sfp,Benadad).— Three kings of DaiMiuscus of this name are mentioned in tlie OT. Ben-hadad I., the son of Tab-riiiimon, the son of Hezion (?Kezon), was bribed by Asa of Judah, with tlie treasures of the temple and palace, to attack Baasha of Israel while the latter was build- ing the fortress of Ramah, and thereby blocking the Jewish high-road to the nortlL Asa urged that there had been alliance between his father and Tab-rimmon ; but lib gold was doubtless more effi- cacious in inducing Ben-hadad to invade the northern part of Israel, and so oblige Baasha to desert Ramah. Thereupon Asa carried away the stone and timber of Ramah, and built with them Geba and Mizpah (1 K IS""-'*). Ben-hadad II. was the son and succes.sor of Ben-hadad I. \\'o have an account of his war with Ahab, and unsuc- ces.sful siege of Samaria, in 1 K 20. Thirty-two kings are said to have been his va.ssals or allies. He was, however, signally defeated at Apliek, and conipelled to restore the cities taken by his fatlier (1 K 20"), as well as to grant the Israelites a bazaar in Dania-scus. At a later period Ben-hadad again besieged Samaria ; but a panic fell upon his anny, and they tied, believing that the King of Israel had hired against them ' the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egj'ptians (2 K 7'''). Ha\ing fallen ill, Ben-hadad afterwards sent Hazael to the prophet Elisha, who had come to Damascus, to ask whether he should recover ; but the result of the mission was, that on tlie following day Hazael smothered his master and seized the crown (2 K 8''"). Ben-hadad III. was the son of Hazael, and lost the Israelitish conquests that his father had made. Thrice did Joash of Israel ' smite him, and recovered the cities of Israel' (2 K IS*").
lien • liadiul, 'son of the god Hadad,' is a Hebraiscil form of the Aram. liar-hadad, which appears in the Assvr. inscriptions as Bur-liadad and Bir-dadda. Bur -hadad was a prince of northern Mesopotamia, who wa-s put to death by Assur-naifir-pal, and Bir-dadda is mentioned by Assur-bani-pal as a north Arabian jirinee {WAJ iii. 24. 10). Hadad, Da.lda, or Dad, and Addu, are stated by the cuneiform lexical tablets to be variant foniis of the same divine name, the god Hadad being further identified in them with Riiii- mon. But it would seem that, like Hadad, Bar- hadad was also a di\ine name, and denoted tlie younger deity whom the Syrians associated with liis father, tlie sun-god. A l!ab. contract, dated in the ninth year of Nabonidus (ac. 547), r«lat«t*
272
BEN-HAIL
BENJAMIN
to a certain Syrian called Bar-hadad-nathan, who had ad«jj»ted liar-hadad-amar as a son. Ab the Jews H^braised Bar-hadad into Ben-hadad, so the Babylonians changed it into Abil-hadad, abil being the Babylonian word for ' son.'
It follows from this that Bar-hadad or Ben- hadad cannot have been the full name of a king. And the Assyr. inscriptions prove that such was the case. They have much to tell us about Ben- hadad II., whom they call Dad-idri, the Hebraised form of which is found in the OT as Hadad-ezer. In B.C. 853 Dad-idri and his allies were utterly defeated at Karkar on the Orontes by Shalman- eser II. of Assyria. The king of Damascus had brought into the field 1200 chariots, 1200 horses, and 20,000 men ; his allies were Irkhulini of Hamath, with 700 chariots, 700 horses, and 10,000 men ; Ahab of Israel, with 2000 chariots and 10,000 men ; the Kuans, from the Gulf of Antioch, with 600 men ; 1000 Egyptians ; 10 chariots, and 10,000 men from the land of Irkanat ( Arka) ; lilatinu-baal of Arvad with 200 men ; 200 men from Usanat (near Tyre) ; Adoni-baal of the Sinites with 10,000 men ; Gindibu the Arab with 1000 camels, and Baasha the son of Rehob of Ainmon with more than 100 men. The battle must have been fought shortly before Ahab's death and his final rupture with Ben-hadad (1 K 22'"'). Shalmaneser states in one passage that 20,500 — in another passage 14,000 — of the enemy were left dead on the field.