[94] "The house of Omri": so even in Sargon's time, 722-705.
[95] The Black Obelisk of Salmanassar in the British Museum, on which the messengers of Jehu are portrayed.
[96] 2 Kings x. 32 f.; xiii. 3.
[97] 2 Kings xiii. 14 ff.
[98] The phrase in 2 Kings xiii. 5, _Jehovah gave Israel a saviour_, is interpreted by certain scholars as if the saviour were Assyria. In xiv. 27 he is plainly said to be Jeroboam.
[99] The entering in of Hamath (2 Kings xiv. 25).
[100] Salmanassar II. in 850, 849, 846 to war against Dad'idri of Damascus, and in 842 and 839 against Hazael, his successor.
[101] See in this series _Isaiah_, Vol. I., pp. 359 ff.
[102] See above, pp. 35 ff.
[103] To use the term which Amos adopts with such ironical force: vi. 14.
[104] When we get down among the details we shall see clear evidence for this fact, for instance, that Amos prophesied against Israel at a time when he thought that the Lord's anger was to be exhausted in purely natural chastisements of His people, and before it was revealed to him that Assyria was required to follow up these chastisements with a heavier blow. See Chap. VI., Section 2.
[105] That is, of course, not the Nile, but the great Wady, at present known as the Wady el 'Arish, which divides Palestine from Egypt.
[106] So already in the JE narratives of the Pentateuch.
[107] Lecky: _History of European Morals_, I.
[108] The present writer has already pointed out this with regard to Egypt and Phœnicia in _Isaiah_ (Expositor's Bible Series), I., Chaps. XXII. and XXIII., and with regard to Philistia in _Hist. Geog._, p. 178.
[109] I put it this way only for the sake of making the logic clear; for it is a mistake to say that the prophets at any time held merely theoretic convictions. All their conviction was really experimental--never held apart from some illustration or proof of principle in actual history.
[110] צבאות יהוה: 1 Sam. i. 3; iv. 4; xvii. 45, where it is explained by the parallel phrase _God of the armies of Israel_; 2 Sam. vi. 2, where it is connected with Israel's battle emblem, the Ark (cf. Jer. xxii. 18); and so throughout Samuel and Kings, and also Chronicles, the Psalms, and most prophets. The plural צבאות is never used in the Old Testament except of human hosts, and generally of the armies or hosts of Israel. The theory therefore which sees the same meaning in the Divine title is probably the correct one. It was first put forward by Herder (_Geist der Eb. Poesie_, ii. 84, 85), and after some neglect it has been revived by Kautzsch (_Z. A. T. W._, vi. ff.) and Stade (_Gesch._, i. 437, _n._ 3). The alternatives are that the hosts originally meant those of heaven, either the angels (so, among others, Ewald, _Hist._, Eng. Ed., iii. 62) or the stars (so Delitzsch, Kuenen, Baudissin, Cheyne, _Prophecies of Isaiah_, i. 11). In the former of these two there is some force; but the reason given for the latter, that the name came to the front in Israel when the people were being drawn into connection with star-worshipping nations, especially Aram, seems to me baseless. Israel had not been long in touch with Aram in Saul's time, yet even then the name is accepted as if one of much earlier origin. A clear account of the argument on the other side to that taken in this note will be found in Smend, _Altiestamentliche Religionsgeschichte_, pp. 185 ff.
[111] See below, Chap. XI.