Short (2 Kings ix, 2").
"And when Ahaziah the kill}; of Judah saw this, he lied by the way of the gar- den-house. Aiid Jehu fol- lowed alter liini, and said, Smite him also in the char- iot. And they did so at the
MEGIDDO
45 MEGIDDO
sepulchre with his fathers sons of the brethren of ill the city of David." Ahaziah, that ministered
to Ahaziah, he slew them. Aud he sought Ahaziah: aud they caught him (for he was hid m Samaria), aud they brought him to Jehu : aud wheu they had slain him, they buried him: Because, said they, he is the sou of Jehoshapliat, who sought the Lord w^ith all his heart. So the house of Ahaziah had no power to keep still the kingdom."
With reference to the above two accounts of the death of Ahaziah, which have been thought irreconcilable (Ewald, iii, 529 ; Parker's De Wette, p. 270 ; Thenius, etc.), it may be here remarked that the order of the events is sufficiently intelligible if we take the accoimt in Chronicles, where the kingdom of Judah is the main subject, as explanatory of the brief notice in Kings, where it is only incidentally mentioned in the history of Israel. The order is clearly as follows : Ahaziah was with Jehoram at Jezreel when Jehu attacked and killed him. Ahaziah escaped and fled by the Beth-gan road to Samaria, where the partisans of the house of Ahab were strongest, and where his own brethren were, and there concealed himself. But when the sons of Ahab were all put to death in Samaria, and the house of Ahab had hopelessly lost the kingdom, he determined to make his submission to Jehu, and sent his brethren to salute the children of Jehu (2 Kings x, 13), in token of his ac- knowledgment of him as king of Israel (not, as Thenius and others, to salute the children of Jehoram, and of Jezebel, the queen-mother). Jehu, instead of accepting this submission, had them all put to death, and hastened on to Samaria to take Ahaziah also, who he had proba- bly learned from some of the attendants, or as he already knew, was at Samaria. Ahaziah again took to flight northwards, towards Jlegiddo, perhaps in hope of reach- ing the dominions of the king of the Sidonians, his kinsman, or more probably to reach the coast where the direct road from TvTe to Egypt would bring him to Judah. See C.esarea. He was hotly pursued by Jehu and his followers, and overtaken near Ibleam, and mor- tally wounded, but managed to get as far as Megiddo, where it would seem Jehu followed in piursuit of him, and where he was brought to him as his prisoner. There he died of his wounds. In consideration of his descent from Jehoshaphat, "who sought Jehovah with all his heart," Jehu, who was at this time very forward in dis- playing his zeal for Jehovah, handed over the corpse to his followers, with permission to carry it to Jerusalem, which they did, and buried him in the city of David. The whole difficulty arises from the account in Kings being abridged, and so bringing together two incidents which were not consecutive in the original account. But if 2 Kings ix, 27 had been even divided into two verses, the first ending at " garden-house," and the next beginning " and Jehu followed after him," the difficidty would almost disappear. Jehu's pursuit of Ahaziah would only be interrupted by a day or two, and there would be nothing the least unusual in the omission to notice this interval of time in the concise abridged nar- rative. We should then understand that the word also in the oi-iginal narrative referred, not to Jehoram, but to the brethren of Ahaziah, who had just before been smit- ten, and the death of Ahaziah would fall under 2 Kings X, 17. If Beth-gan (A. V. " garden-house") be the same as En-gannim, now Jenin, it lay directly on the road from Jezreel to Samaria, and is also the place at which the road to Megiddo and the coast, where Cicsarea after- wards stood, turns off from the road betw^een Jezreel and Samaria. In this case the mention of Beth-gan in Kings as the direction of Ahaziah's flight is a confirma- tion of the statement in Chronicles that he concealed himself in Samaria, This is also substantially Keil's explanation (p. 288, 289). Movers proposes an altera- tion of the text (p. 92, note), but not very successfully
(fTliin-ib X^in Xb^l instead of ^in.^-^N =l!^i<??.^). See Jehu.
(3.) But the chief historical interest of Megiddo is concentrated in Josiah's death. On this occasion Me- giddo saw a very different sight from the first, and heard, instead of a song of triumph, a funeral wail from the vanquished host of Israel (Zech. xii, 1 1). Pharaoh- Necho was on his march against the king of Assyria. He passed up the plains of Philistia and Sharon, and king Josiah foolishly attempted to stop him while defil- ing through the glens of Carmel into the plain of Me- giddo. He was defeated, and as he fled the Egyptian archers shot him in his chariot. He was taken to Je- rusalem, but appears to have died on the road (2 Kings xxiii, 29). The story is told in the Chronicles in more detail (2 Chron. xxxv, 22-24). There the fatal action is said to have taken place " in the valley of IMegiddo" (Sept. tv T([i n(Si<i> MayfOowv). This calamity made a deep and permanent impression on the Jews. It is recounted agam in 1 Estl. i, 25-31, where in the A.V. "the plain of Magiddo" represents the same Greek words. The lamentations for this good king became '• an ordinance in Israel" (2 Chron. xxxv, 25). " In all Jewry" they mourned for him, and the lamentation was made perpetual " in all the nation of Israel" (1 Esd. i, 32). " Their grief was no land-flood of present passion, but a constant channel of continued sorrow, streaming from an annual fountain" (Fuller's Pisguh Sif/ht of Pal- estine, p. 165). Thus, in the language of the prophets (Zech. xii, 11), "the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley (Sept. 7r«0i</j) of Megiddon" becomes a poetical expression for the deepest and most despairing grief; as in the Apocalypse (Rev. xvi, 16) Armageddon, in con- tinuance of the same imagery, is presented as the scene of terrible and final conflict. For the Septuagint ver- sion of this passage of Zechariah, we may refer to Je- rome's note on the passage. "Adadremmon, pro quo LXX transtulerunt 'Powi'oc, urbs est juxta Jesrrelem, quaj hoc olim vocabulo nuncapata est, et hodie vocatur Maximianopolis in Campo jMageddon." A r-Mageddon may be for 11573 "i?, that is, "the city of Megiddo;" or if we regard the aspirated ap as equivalent to the He- brew "in, then the meaning will be "moimtain of IMe- giddo," which would likewise be appropriate (Alford, ad loc). That the prophet's imagerj' is drawn from the occasion of Josiah's death there can be no doubt. In Stanley's S. and P. (p. 347) this calamitous event is made very vivid to us by an allusion to the " Egyptian archers, in their long array, so well known from their sculptured monuments." For the mistake in the ac- count of Pharaoh-Necho's campaign in Herodotus, who has evidently put JMigdol by mistake for Megiddo (ii, 159), it is enough to refer to Biihr's excursus on the passage (see below). The Egyptian king may have landed his troops at Acre ; but it is far more likely that he marched northwards along the coast-plain, and then turned round Carmel into the plain of Esdraelon, taking the left bank of the Kishon, and that there the Jewish king came upon him by the gorge of Megiddo.