use of this material they freely recast the stories to suit their own purposes, rejecting that for which they had no use, or using it but to condemn, and saturating the whole with their own conceptions of Jehovah and their highest ideals of national and religious life.

To us who see the printed page issued by millions from the daily press the magnitude of the task of creating literature, and of circulating it, two thousand years before the invention of the printing press, in an age when implements were of the crudest, and in a country where the scribal class had not yet developed, is difficult to comprehend. Only the imagination can enable us to appreciate it and to understand the labor of brain and hand involved, as well as the spiritual insight manifested in the activities of the loyal and energetic prophets in the period following Elijah and Elisha. To them we owe the beginning of the literature of the Hebrew people and a large section of the Old Testament.

CHAPTER VI

ISRAEL AND HER FOREIGN RELATIONSHIPS FROM 876–722 B.C. Before taking up the specific work of another prophet it will be necessary to make a survey of the foreign relationships of Israel during a period extending over a century and a half, a part of which we have already covered, and the remainder of which we must anticipate in order to gain a background for the following chapters. The work of the prophets is so wrapped up in the circumstances attending these relationships that one must be clearly understood in order that the other may be correctly interpreted. We must not lose sight of the fact that each prophet spoke primarily to the men of his own day and his own region.

Upon the death of Ahab at Ramoth Gilead, a period of disaster set in for northern Israel. Ahab's son Joram, after a troubled reign of twelve years, was conspired against and slain by Jehu, a captain in his army. Jehu at once assumed the throne, and sought to make himself secure by a wholesale slaughter of the house of Ahab. The nation was thus robbed of the very leaders who had helped to make it great, and its interests fell into the hands of usurpers who were both murderers and traitors.

Thus weakened at home and torn by conflicting parties, Israel's misery was accentuated by attacks from external foes. Damascus, her neighbor on the north, under the aggressive leadership of King Hazael, invaded Israel again and again, and found her an easy prey during the latter part of the reign of Jehu, and all the days of his son Jehoahaz. The state of weakness to which Israel was reduced is indicated by the following statements from the Second Book of Kings: "For he left not to Jehoahaz of the people save fifty horsemen, and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen: for the king of Syria destroyed them and made them like the dust of the threshing.

For Jehovah saw the affliction of Israel that it was very bitter: for there was none shut up or left at large, neither was there any helper for Israel."

In addition to this we learn from the black obelisk inscription of Shalmaneser II of Assyria that Jehu was forced to pay tribute to Assyria. This annual tax was a heavy drain upon the resources of the almost exhausted country. Relief came however in the days of Joash, the successor of Jehoahaz, and of his son Jeroboam II. The source of the deliverance was Assyria herself. This great empire could be satisfied with nothing less than dominion over the whole civilized world. The mountains of Elam and Persia shut her in on the east, and her natural lines of expansion lay along the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates toward the northwest and the west. In these directions she was constantly pushing. Israel's first contact with her was in the reign of Ahab. At that time Assyria's encroachments upon the smaller states of western Asia had become so pressing as to make these states recognize that their only safety lay in a united effort to turn back the hosts of Assyria. Consequently a coalition of forces was accomplished and a great contest was waged against her at Karkar in 854 B.C., the record of which is preserved in an Assyrian inscription. Ahab of Israel was one of the leading spirits in this enterprise. The result was apparently indecisive. But Assyria did not return to the attack for five years. Meantime the coalition had fallen to pieces, and its members were fighting among themselves. Damascus in Syria, and Israel became deadly enemies and waged war upon one another during the entire reign of Ahab. Damascus would undoubtedly have completely overcome Israel at this time had it not been for the fact that Assyria took advantage of this dissension among the allies to renew the attack upon the west. Four successive campaigns at intervals of a few years were made by Shalmaneser II against Damascus, and these so crippled the latter that Ahab of Israel was able to hold his own in the otherwise unequal contest between Israel and Damascus. But upon the death of Shalmaneser Assyria suffered a temporary decline in power, and Damascus was freed from her attacks for a period of over thirty years. Damascus took advantage of this opportunity to renew hostilities with Israel, and the lamentable condition of Israel in the days of Jehu and Jehoahaz was the result.