[276] Νήπιος ὃς πατέρα κτείνας υἱοὺς καταλείπει. Comp. Q. Curtius, vi. 11: "Lege cautum erat ut propinqui eorum qui regi insidiati cum ipsis necarentur." Cic., _Ad Brut._, 15.
[277] 2 Kings viii. 20-22.
[278] Amos i. 11.
[279] The Valley (_Gê_) of Salt is "the plain of the Sabkah," about two miles broad, between the southern end of the Dead Sea and the hills which separate the Ghôr from the Arabah (Seetzen, _Reisen_, ii. 356; Robinson, _Researches_, ii. 450, 488). David had won a great victory there (2 Sam. viii. 13; Psalm lx., _title_).
[280] Selah, "a rock" (Πέτρα). Eusebius calls it Rekem.
[281] It is the name also of a city of Judah (Josh. xv. 38).
[282] 2 Chron. xxviii. 17; Jos., _Antt._, XII. viii. 6.
[283] 2 Chron. xxv. 5-10, 13.
[284] Κατακρημνισμός. This mode of execution prevailed till quite recent times in the little republic of Andorra.
[285] 2 Kings xiv. 17. The phrase that "he _lived_ fifteen years" is unusual, and seems to imply that the historian saw,--
"In more of life true life no more."
[286] Josh. x. 6, 31, xv. 39; 2 Kings xviii. 17; 2 Chron. xi. 9.
B.C. Jehoahaz 814-797 2 Kings xiii. 1-9 Joash 797-781 " xiii. 10-21, xiv. 8-16 Jeroboam II. 781-740 " xiv. 23-29 Zechariah 740 " xv. 8-12
"Them that honour Me I will honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed."--1 SAM. ii. 30.
Israel had scarcely ever sunk to so low a nadir of degradation as she did in the reign of the son of Jehu. We have already mentioned that some assign to his reign the ghastly story which we have narrated in our sketch of the work of Elisha. It is told in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, and seems to belong to the reign of Jehoram ben-Ahab; but it may have got displaced from this epoch of yet deeper wretchedness. The accounts of Jehoahaz in 2 Kings xiii. are evidently fragmentary and abrupt.
Jehoahaz reigned seventeen years.[287] Naturally, he did not disturb the calf-worship, which, like all his predecessors and successors, he regarded as a perfectly innocent symbolic adoration of Jehovah, whose name he bore and whose service he professed. Why should he do so? It had been established now for more than two centuries. His father, in spite of his passionate and ruthless zeal for Jehovah, had never attempted to disturb it. No prophet--not even Elijah nor Elisha, the practical establishers of his dynasty--had said one word to condemn it. It in no way rested on his conscience as an offence; and the formal condemnation of it by the historian only reflects the more enlightened judgment of the Southern Kingdom and of a later age. But according to the parenthesis which breaks the thread of this king's story (2 Kings xiii. 5, 6), he was guilty of a far more culpable defection from orthodox worship; for in his reign, the Asherah--the tree or pillar of the Tyrian nature-goddess--still remained in Samaria, and therefore must have had its worshippers. How it came there we cannot tell. Jezebel had set it up (1 Kings xvi. 33), with the connivance of Ahab. Jehu apparently had "put it away" with the great stêlê of Baal (2 Kings iii. 2), but, for some reason or other, he had not destroyed it. It now apparently occupied some public place, a symbol of decadence, and provocative of the wrath of Heaven.
Jehoahaz sank very low. Hazael's savage sword, not content with the devastation of Bashan and Gilead, wasted the west of Israel also in all its borders. The king became a mere vassal of his brutal neighbour at Damascus. So little of the barest semblance of power was left him, that whereas, in the reign of David, Israel could muster an army of eight hundred thousand, and in the reign of Joash, the son and successor of Jehoahaz, Amaziah could hire from Israel one hundred thousand mighty men of valour as mercenaries, Jehoahaz was only allowed to maintain an army of ten chariots, fifty horsemen, and ten thousand infantry! In the picturesque phrase of the historian, "the King of Syria had threshed down Israel to the dust," in spite of all that Jehoahaz did, or tried to do, and "all his might." How completely helpless the Israelites were is shown by the fact that their armies could offer no opposition to the free passage of the Syrian troops through their land. Hazael did not regard them as threatening his rear; for, in the reign of Jehoahaz, he marched southwards, took the Philistine city of Gath, and threatened Jerusalem. Joash of Judah could only buy them off with the bribe of all his treasures, and according to the Chronicler they "destroyed all the princes of the people," and took great spoil to Damascus.[288]