Another question that may be asked is how the Assyrian monarch can say that twelve princes were arrayed in arms against him, when, according to his own enumeration, the forces of only eleven nations were present, some of which do not seem to have been under the command of any king. The only answer that can be given is that Shalmaneser is guilty of a similar arithmetical inaccuracy to that which makes him say that 14,000 of the enemy fell in battle, whereas, according to other accounts, the number was really 20,500; though it is possible that the latter number may include the loss in other battles that took place during the campaign besides the decisive one at Karkar. When, however, we find such arithmetical corruptions as these in contemporaneous documents, we need not wonder that the numerical statements of the Old Testament have become changed and uncertain in their passage through the hands of generations of copyists.
We may infer from the fifth chapter of 2 Kings that the god Rimmon was the chief object of worship of Hadadezer or Ben-hadad, the Syrian king. The Assyrian inscriptions have shown us why this was so. Rimmon is the Assyrian Ramman, the Air-god, and Ramman is specially identified with the Syrian deity Hadad, whose name enters into that of Hadadezer. Hadad-Rimmon, in fact, was the supreme divinity of Damascus, where he represented, not the god of the air, as among the Assyrians, but Baal, the Sun-god, himself. Hence it is that in Zechariah xii. 11, reference is made to the "mourning of Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo," that is to say, to the yearly festival, when the women mourned for the death of the Sun-god, slain, as it was imagined, by the winter. In Phoenicia the god was known as Adônis, the "lord," or under his old Babylonian title of Tammuz. It was for Tammuz, it will be remembered, that Ezekiel saw the women sitting and weeping within the precincts of "the Lord's house" itself in Jerusalem (Ezek. viii. 14).
Hadadezer was murdered between the fourteenth and eighteenth years of Shalmaneser, and the crown seized by Hazael. In his eighteenth year the Assyrian king moved against the usurper, and captured his camp along with 1,121 chariots and 470 war-magazines. The battle took place on the summit of Sanir or Shenir--the name given to Mount Hermon by the Amorites according to Deut. iii. 9--"which lies over against Lebanon." Here 16,000 of the Syrians fell in battle, and Hazael fled to Damascus, whither he was followed by the Assyrians. Damascus, however, proved too strong to be captured, and Shalmaneser accordingly contented himself with cutting down the trees by which it was surrounded, and retiring into the Haurân, where he burnt the unwalled towns, and carried away their inhabitants into captivity. He then followed the high road from Damascus to the Mediterranean, and on the promontory of Baal-rosh, at the mouth of the Dog River, near Beyrût, had an image of himself carved upon the rocks. At the same place he received the tribute of Tyre and Sidon, as well as of "Yahua, the son of Khumri," that is to say, of Jehu, the descendant of Omri. In calling Jehu a descendant of Omri, the Assyrian king was misinformed; he had heard nothing of the revolution which had extirpated the house of Omri, and had placed Jehu upon the throne. Like Ahab, therefore, Jehu was supposed to be a son of Omri, the founder of Samaria, which is frequently termed Beth-Omri, "the house of Omri," in the Assyrian inscriptions, though in the later days of Tiglath-Pileser II and Sargon, "Beth-Omri" is superseded by "Samirina." This was the Aramaic form of the native name--Shimrôn, and must consequently have been derived by the Assyrians from the Aramaic neighbours of the Israelites.