At one time he had found himself so hard pressed that he invoked the aid of the Syrian gods, and made his eldest son pass through the fire in order to propitiate them:* he collected together all the silver and gold he could find in his own treasury or in that of the temple and sent it to Tiglath-pileser, with this message:  “I am thy servant and thy son:  come up and save me out of the hand of the King of Syria, and out of the hand of the King of Israel, which rise up against me."**

* 2 Kings xvi. 3 (cf. 2 Chron. xxviii. 3).  There is nothing to indicate the date, but most historians place the event at the beginning of the Syrian war, a little before or during the siege.

     ** Kings xvi. 7, 8; cf. 2 Chron. xxviii. 16, 20, 21.

Tiglath-pileser came in haste, and Rezin and Pekah, at the mere tidings of his approach, desisted from their attack on Jerusalem, separated, and retired each to his own kingdom.  The Assyrian king did not immediately follow them up.  He took the road leading along the coast, after leaving the plains of the middle Orontes, and levied tribute from the Phoenician cities as he passed; he then began by attacking the western frontier of Israel, and sent a body of troops against the Philistines, who were ceaselessly harassing Judah.  Hannon, King of Gaza, did not await the attack, but fled to Egypt for safety, and Ahaz breathed freely, perhaps for the first time since his accession.  This, however, was only a beginning; the real struggle took place in the following year, and was hotly contested.  In spite of the sorry pass to which its former defeats and present discords had brought it, Damascus still possessed immense wealth, and its army, when reinforced by the Arabian and Israelite contingents, was capable of holding its own for a long time against the battalions of Assyria, even if it could not hope to conquer them.  Unfortunately for its chances, Eezin had failed to inherit the military capacity of his great predecessors, Ben-hadad and Hazael; he allowed Tiglath-pileser to crush the Hebrews without rendering them any effective assistance.  Pekah fought his best, but he lost, one after another, the strongholds which guarded his northern frontier—­Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, and Hazor; he saw the whole of Naphtali and Gilead laid waste, and their inhabitants carried off into Assyria without his being able to prevent it; he himself being obliged to evacuate Samaria and take refuge in the mountains almost unattended.  Judah followed, with mingled exultation and disquietude, the vicissitudes of the tragic drama which was thus enacted before its eyes, and Isaiah foretold the speedy ruin of the two peoples who had but yesterday threatened to enslave it.  He could already see the following picture in his mind’s eye:  “Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.  The cities of Aroer are forsaken:  they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid."*