"Sunt lacrimæ rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt."
They hastily broke up the league, dissolved the alliance, returned horror-stricken to their own land. They left Moab indeed in possession of his last fortress, but they had reduced his territory to a wilderness before they retired and called it peace.
[43] There are great difficulties in the statement (2 Kings iii. 1) that he began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat. I have not entered, nor shall I enter, into the minute and precarious conjectures necessitated by the uncertainties and contradictions of this synchronism introduced into the narrative by some editor. Suffice it that with the aid of the Assyrian records we have certain _points de repère_; from which we can, with the assistance of the historian, conjecturally restore the main data. In the dates given at the head of the chapters I follow Kittel, as a careful inquirer. Some of the approximately fixed dates are (see Appendix I.):--
854. Battle of Karkar (Ahab and Benhadad against Shalmaneser II.) 738. Tribute of Menahem to Tiglath-Pileser II. 732. Fall of Damascus. 722. Capture of Samaria by Sargon. 720. Defeat of Sabaco by Sargon in battle of Raphia. 705. Accession of Sennacherib. 701. Campaign against Hezekiah. 608. Death of Josiah.
[44] But neither the man of God from Judah nor Amos directly denounce the calf-worship, so much as its concomitant sins and irregularities.
[45] Perhaps the true reading is "pillars" (LXX., Vulg., Arab.).
[46] He is called "a sheep-master," _noked_; LXX., [Greek: nôkêd]. Elsewhere the word occurs only in Amos i. 1. The Alex. LXX. has [Greek: ên pherôn phoron].
[48] It is not clear whether the lambs and rams were sent with the fleeces. The A.V. says "lambs and rams with their wool," in accordance with Josephus--[Greek: myriadas eikosi probatôn syn tois pokois]. The LXX. has the vague [Greek: epi pokôn], and implies that this was a special fine after a defeat in the revolt ([Greek: en tê epanastasei]): but comp. Isa. xvi. 1.
[50] Robinson (_Bibl. Res._, ii. 157) identifies it with the brook _Zered_. Deut. ii. 13; Num. xxi. 12. The name means "valley of water-pits." W. R. Smith quotes Doughty, _Travels_, i. 26.
[51] Comp. 1 Kings xxii. 7. The phrase "who poured water on the hands of Elijah" is a touch of Oriental custom which the traveller in remote parts of Palestine may still often see. Once, when driven by a storm into the house of the Sheykh of a tribe which had a rather bad reputation for brigandage, I was most hospitably entertained; and the old white-haired Sheykh, his son, and ourselves were waited on by the grandson, a magnificent youth, who immediately after the meal brought out an old richly chased ewer and basin, and poured water over our hands, soiled by eating out of the common dish, of course without spoons or forks.