Hazael Murders Ben-Hadad (8:7–15)

Damascus (8:7). Situated on the Barada River—the only major perennial source of water in the region of southern Syria—Damascus was an important city in the ancient world and a major transit point for caravans that ran from Africa to Mesopotamia (see comments on 5:1).

Take a gift with you and go to meet the man of God (8:8). Ben-Hadad II consulted Israel’s God about his future in much the same way that King Ahaziah of Israel earlier consulted Baal-Zebub of Ekron (see comments on 1:2). It appears to have been customary when consulting prophets for this and other purposes to offer some payment—in this case an extravagant gift of forty camel-loads of wares (cf. 1 Sam. 9:1–9; 1 Kings 14:1–4; 2 Kings 5:1–6).

Hazael (8:8). Hazael’s seizure of the throne of Aram from Ben-Hadad II, known to the Assyrians as Adad-idri, is recorded not only in 8:7–15 but also in a fragmentary Assyrian text on a basalt statue of Shalmaneser III, which refers to Hazael as the “son of nobody,” perhaps reflecting his lowly, nonroyal origins. This dismissive notation is interestingly matched by Hazael’s own self-deprecating speech in 8:13, where he refers to himself as “a mere dog”—a conventional humility matched in one of the Lachish ostraca of the later seventh century B.C. (see sidebar “The Lachish Ostraca” at 24:20), in which a subordinate addresses a superior thus: “I am nothing but a dog; why should you think of me?”63

Basalt statue of Shalmaneser III with inscription

Todd Bolen/www.BiblePlaces.com

Hazael came to power at some point between Shalmaneser’s campaign in the west in his fourteenth year (845 B.C.), when we know that Adad-idri was still on the throne, and the campaign of Shalmaneser’s eighteenth year (841 B.C.), which records Hazael now as king. He reigned for around forty years as one of Israel’s most bitter enemies.