Pekah also withdrew his forces--no doubt compelled to do so by the step which Ahaz took in his desperation. For now the King of Judah invoked the protection and invited the active interference of Tiglath-Pileser against his enemies--"to save him out of the hand of the King of Syria, and out of the hand of the King of Israel, who were risen up against him."
Rezin and Damascus first felt the might of the Assyrian's conquering arm. The account of his decisive conquest is preserved in the _Eponym Canon_, and the passages which refer to the defeat of the Syrians will be found in the First Appendix at the end of the volume. It appears from the monuments that Rezin (Rasannu) lost not only his kingdom, but his life.
It is the death-knell of Aramæan greatness, as Amos had foretold.
"Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; Because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron: But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, Which shall devour the palaces of Benhadad. And I will break the bar of Damascus,[381] And cut off him that sitteth [on the throne] in the Valley of Aven,[382] And him that holdeth the sceptre from Beth-Eden:[383] And the people of Syria shall go into captivity unto Kir,[384] Saith Jehovah."
Rezin was slain--how we know not; very probably by one of the horrible methods of torture--by being flayed alive, or decapitated, or having his lips and nose cut off--which were practised by these demon-kings of Nineveh.
Nor did Pekah escape. Tiglath-Pileser advanced against the northern part of his dominions, and afflicted the land of Zebulon and Naphtali. Ijon; Abel-beth-Maachah, the city of Elisha; Zanoah, the ancient sanctuary of Kedesh-Naphtali, the home of the hero Barak; Hazor, the former capital of the Canaanitish king Jabin; Gilead; Galilee,--all submitted to him, apparently without striking a serious blow. He dealt with the miserable inhabitants in the way familiar to kings of Assyria. He deported them _en masse_ into a strange country of which they did not understand the language, and in which they were reduced to hopeless subjection, while he supplied their places by aliens from various parts of his own dominions. There could be no securer method of reducing to paralysis all their national aspirations. Strangers in a strange land, they forgot their nationality, forgot their religion, forgot their language, forgot their traditions. Their sole resource was to plunge into material pursuits, and to melt away into indistinguishable obliteration among the neighbouring heathen. It was the beginning of the Northern Captivity--of the loss of the Ten Tribes.