Rehoboam did not readily accept the situation; he sought to reduce the revolt by force of arms, with what degree of success is shown by the fact that his rival found himself constrained to take up his residence at Peniel (near Mahanaim) on the other side of Jordan.  The invasion of Shishak, however, who took Jerusalem and burnt it, gave Jeroboam at last a breathing space.  The feud continued indeed, but Rehoboam could no longer dream of bringing back the ten tribes.  The scale by and by turned in Israel’s favour.  King Baasha, who had seated himself on the throne in place of Nadab, Jeroboam’s son, took the offensive, and Asa ben Rehoboam had no help for it but to call in Benhadad of Damascus against his adversary.  In this way he gained his immediate purpose, it is true, but by the most dangerous of expedients.

Baasha’s son Elah was supplanted by his vizier Zimri, who, however, was in his turn unable to hold his own against Omri, who had supreme command of the army.  Against Omri there arose in another part of the country a rival, Tibni ben Ginath, who succeeded in maintaining some footing until his death, when Omri became supreme.  Omri must be regarded as the founder of the first dynasty, in the proper sense of that word, in Israel, and as the second founder of the kingdom itself, to which he gave a permanent capital in Samaria.  The Bible has hardly anything to tell us about him, but his importance is evident from the fact that among the Assyrians “the kingdom of Omri” / 1/

********************************** 1.  Bit Humri, like )OIKOS LUSANIOU, and similar territorial names in Syriac. ********************************

was the ordinary name of Israel.  According to the inscription of Mesha, it was he who again subjugated Moab, which had become independent at the death of David or of Solomon.  He was not so successful against the Damascenes, to whom he had to concede certain privileges in his own capital (1Kings xx. 34) 2

********************************** 2.  Omri’s accession is to be placed somewhere about 900 B.C It is a date, and the first, that can be determined with some precision, if we place the battle of Karkar (854) near the end of Ahab’s reign, and take the servitude of Moab, which lasted forty years and ended with Ahab’s deatb, to begin in Omri’s first decade. **********************************

Ahab, who succeeded Omri his father, seems during the greater part of his reign to have in some sort acknowledged Syrian suzerainty.  In no other way can we account for the fact that in the battle of Karkar against the Assyrians (854 B.C.) a contingent was contributed by him.  But this very battle made the political situation so clear that he was led to break off his relations with Damascus.  With this began a series of ferocious attacks on Israel by Benhadad and Hazael.  They were met by Ahab with courage and success, but in the third year of that fifty years’ war he fell in the battle at Ramoth Gilead (c. 851).