experienced; he returned sick and at the point of death to Damascus, where he was assassinated by Hazael, one of his captains.  Hebrew tradition points to the influence of the prophets in all these events.  The aged Elijah had disappeared, so ran the story, caught up to heaven in a chariot of fire, but his mantle had fallen on Elisha, and his power still survived in his disciple.  From far and near Elisha’s counsel was sought, alike by Gentiles as by the followers of the true God; whether the suppliant was the weeping Shunamite mourning for the loss of her only son, or Naaman the captain of the Damascene chariotry, he granted their petitions, and raised the child from its bed, and healed the soldier of his leprosy.  During the siege of Samaria, he had several times frustrated the enemy’s designs, and had predicted to Joram not only the fact but the hour of deliverance, and the circumstances which would accompany it.  Ben-hadad had sent Hazael to the prophet to ask him if he should recover, and Elisha had wept on seeing the envoy—­“Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel; their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their women with child.  And Hazael said, But what is thy servant which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?  And Elisha answered, The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria.”  On returning to Damascus Hazael gave the results of his mission in a reassuring manner to Ben-hadad, but “on the morrow... he took the coverlet and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died.”

The deed which deprived it of its king^ seriously affected Damascus itself.  It was to Ben-hadad that it owed most of its prosperity; he it was who had humiliated Hamath and the princes of the coast of Arvad, and the nomads of the Arabian desert.  He had witnessed the rise of the most energetic of all the Israelite dynasties, and he had curbed its ambition; Omri had been forced to pay him tribute; Ahab, Ahaziah, and Joram had continued it; and Ben-hadad’s suzerainty, recognised more or less by their vassals, had extended through Moab and Judah as far as the Bed Sea.  Not only had he skilfully built up this fabric of vassal states which made him lord of two-thirds of Syria, but he had been able to preserve it unshaken for a quarter of a century, in spite of rebellions in several of his fiefs and reiterated attacks from Assyria; Shalmaneser, indeed, had made an attack on his line, but without breaking through it, and had at length left him master of the field.  This superiority, however, which no reverse could shake, lay in himself and in himself alone; no sooner had he passed away than it suddenly ceased, and Hazael found himself restricted from the very outset to the territory of Damascus proper.* Hamath, Arvad, and the northern peoples deserted the league, to return to it no more; Joram of Israel called on his nephew Ahaziah, who had just succeeded to Jehoram of Judah, and both together marched to besiege Bamoth.