A rebellion, instigated, it may be, by his own agents, recalled Tiglath-pileser to the Amanus in the year 738.  The petty kings who shared with Assyria the possession of the mountains and plains of the Afrin could not succeed in living at peace with one another, and every now and then their disputes broke out into open warfare.  Samalla was at that time subject to a family of which the first members known to history, Qaral and Panammu, shared Yaudi equally between them.  Barzur, son of Panammu I., had reigned there since about 765 B.C., and there can be little doubt that he must have passed through the same vicissitudes as his neighbours; faithful to Urartu as long as Sharduris kept the upper hand, and to Assyria as soon as Tiglath-pileser had humiliated Urartu, he had been killed in a skirmish by some rival.  His son, Panammu IL, came to the throne merely as a nominee of his suzerain, and seems to have always rendered him faithful service; unfortunately, Yaudi was no longer subject to the house of Panammu, but obeyed the rule of a certain Azriyahu, who chafed at the presence of an alien power.*

* Azriyahu of Yaudi was identified with Azariah of Judah by G. Smith, and this identification was for a long time accepted without question by most Assyriologists.  After a violent controversy it has finally been shown that the Yaudi of Tiglath-pileser III.’a inscriptions ought to be identified with the Yadi or Yaudi of the Zinjirli inscriptions, and consequently that Azriyahu was not king of Judah, but a king of Northern Syria.  This view appears to me to harmonise so well with what remains of the texts, and with our knowledge of the events, that I have had no hesitation in adopting it.

Azriyahu took advantage of the events which kept Tiglath-pileser fully occupied in the east, to form a coalition in favour of himself among the states on the banks of the Orontes, including some seventeen provinces, dependencies of Hamath, and certain turbulent cities of Northern Phoenicia, such as Byblos, Arka, Zimyra, Usnu, Siannu, Coele-Syria, and even Hadrach itself.  It is not quite clear whether Damascus and the Hebrews took part in this movement.  Jeroboam had died in 740, after a prosperous reign of forty-one years, and on his death Israel seems to have fallen under a cloud; six months later, his son Zechariah was assassinated at Ibleam by Shallum, son of Jabesh, and the prophecy of Amos, in which he declared that the house of Jeroboam should fall beneath the sword of Jahveh,* was fulfilled.  Shallum himself reigned only one month:  two other competitors had presented themselves immediately after his crime;** the ablest of these, Menahem, son of Gadi, had come from Tirzah to Samaria, and, after suppressing his rivals, laid hands on the crown.*** He must have made himself master of the kingdom little by little, the success of his usurpation being entirely due to the ruthless energy invariably and everywhere displayed by him; as, for instance, when Tappuakh (Tiphsah) refused to open its gates at his summons, he broke into the town and slaughtered its inhabitants.****