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greatest interest is it to learn from these monuments the political motives which
prompted the strange and sudden alliance proposed by Ahab to Ben-hadad (a name
amply confirmed by the monuments), after the battle of Aphek (1 Kings 20:26-34).
In passing we may notice that in a fragmentary inscription of Asarhaddon, this
Aphek, situated east of the lake of Galilee, and a little aside from the great road
between Damascus and Samaria, is named as the border-city of Samaria.
Similarly, the mention of thirty-two kings allied with Ben-hadad in his campaign
against Israel (1 Kings 20:1), is so far borne out by the Assyrian monuments, that in
the campaigns of Assyria against Syria Ben-hadad is always described as fighting in
conjunction with a number of allied Syrian princes.^191
From these inscriptions we also learn that the growing power of Assyria threatened
to overwhelm - as it afterwards did – both Syria and the smaller principalities
connected with it. A politician like Ahab must have felt the danger threatening his
kingdom of Samaria from the advancing power of Assyria. If Ben-hadad had
endeavored to strengthen himself by the subjugation of Samaria, Ahab, in the hour of
his triumph, desired, by an alliance with the now humbled Ben-hadad, to place Syria
as a kind of bulwark between himself and the king of Assyria. This explains the
motive of Ahab, who had no real trust in the might and deliverance of Jehovah, but
looked to political combinations for safety, in allowing to go out of his hand the man
whom Jehovah "appointed to utter destruction" (1 Kings 20:42).
Another circumstance connected with the treaty of Aphek, not recorded in the Bible,
and only known from the Assyrian monuments, casts light on this prophetic
announcement of judgment to Ahab: "Therefore thy life shall be for his life, and thy
people for his people." From the monuments we learn, in illustration of the alliance
between Ben-hadad and Ahab, and of the punishment threatened upon it, that in the
battle of Karkar, or Aroer, in which the Assyrian monarch Shalmaneser II. So
completely defeated Syria, the forces of Ahab, to the number of not fewer than 2000
chariots and 10,000 men, had fought on the side of Ben-hadad. As we read of 14,000
or, in another inscription,^192 of 20,500 of the allies as having been slain in this
battle,^193 we perceive the fulfillment of the Divine threatening upon that alliance (1
Kings 20:42).
At the same time we may also learn that many things mentioned in Scripture which,
with our present means of knowledge, seem strange and inexplicable, may become
plain, and be fully confirmed, by further information derived from independent
sources.
The battle of Karkar was not the only engagement in which the forces of Syria met,
and were defeated by, those of Assyria. It was fought in the sixth year of the reign of
(^)