he rise of the
most energetic of all the Israelite dynasties, and he had curbed its
ambition; Omri had been forced to pay him tribute; Ahab, Ahaziah, and
Joram had continued it; and Ben-hadad's suzerainty, recognised more or
less by their vassals, had extended through Moab and Judah as far as the
Bed Sea. Not only had he skilfully built up this fabric of vassal states
which made him lord of two-thirds of Syria, but he had been able to
preserve it unshaken for a quarter of a century, in spite of
rebellions in several of his fiefs and reiterated attacks from Assyria;
Shalmaneser, indeed, had made an attack on his line, but without
breaking through it, and had at length left him master of the field.
This superiority, however, which no reverse could shake, lay in himself
and in himself alone; no sooner had he passed away than it suddenly
ceased, and Hazael found himself restricted from the very outset to the
territory of Damascus proper.* Hamath, Arvad, and the northern peoples
deserted the league, to return to it no more; Joram of Israel called on
his nephew Ahaziah, who had just succeeded to Jehoram of Judah, and both
together marched to besiege Bamoth.

* From this point onward, the Assyrian texts which mentioned
_the twelve kings of the Khati_, Irkhulini of Hamath and
Adadidri (Ben-hadad) of Damascus, now only name _Khazailu of
the country of Damascus_.

The Israelites were not successful in their methods of carrying on
sieges; Joram, wounded in a skirmish, retired to his palace at Jezreel,
where Ahaziah joined him a few days later, on the pretext of inquiring
after his welfare. The prophets of both kingdoms and their followers
had never forgiven the family of Ahab their half-foreign extraction, nor
their eclecticism in the matter of religion. They had numerous partisans
in both armies, and a conspiracy was set on foot against the absent
sovereigns; Elisha, judging the occasion to be a propitious one,
despatched one of his disciples to the camp with secret instructions.
The generals were all present at a banquet, when the messenger arrived;
he took one of them, Jehu, the son of Nimshi, on one side, anointed
him, and then escaped. Jehu returned, and seated himself amongst his
fellow-officers, who, unsuspicious of what had happened, questioned him
as to the errand. "Is all well? Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee?
And he said unto them, Ye know the man and what his talk was. And they
said, It is