** The text of Bull No. 1 adds to the account of the war against Arame, that of a war against the Damascene league, which merely repeats the account of Shalmaneser’s eleventh year.  It is generally admitted that the war against Arame falls under his tenth year, and the war against Ben-hadad during his eleventh year.  The scribes must have had at their disposal two different versions of one document, in which these two wars were described without distinction of year.  The compiler of the inscription of the Bulls would have considered them as forming two distinct accounts, which he has placed one after the other.

In 849 B.C. it was the turn of Damascus.  The league of which Ben-hadad had proclaimed himself the suzerain was still in existence, but it had recently narrowly escaped dissolution, and a revolt had almost deprived it of the adherence of Israel and the house of Omri—­after Hamath, the most active of all its members.  The losses suffered at Qarqar had doubtless been severe enough to shake Ahab’s faith in the strength of his master and ally.  Besides this, it would appear that the latter had not honourably fulfilled all the conditions of the treaty of peace he had signed three years previously; he still held the important fortress of Bamoth-gilead, and he delayed handing it over to Ahab in spite of his oath to restore it.  Finding that he could not regain possession of it by fair means, Ahab resolved to take it by force.  A great change in feeling and politics had taken place at Jerusalem.  Jehoshaphat, who occupied the throne, was, like his father Asa, a devout worshipper of Jahveh, but his piety did not blind him to the secular needs of the moment.  The experience of his predecessors had shown that the union of the twelve tribes under the rule of a scion of Judah was a thing of the past for ever; all attempts to restore it had ended in failure and bloodshed, and the house of David had again only lately been saved from ruin by the dearly bought intervention of Ben-hadad I. and his Syrians.  Jehoshaphat from the outset clearly saw the necessity of avoiding these errors of the past; he accepted the situation and sought the friendship of Israel.  An alliance between two princes so unequal in power could only result in a disguised suzerainty for one of them and a state of vassalage for the other; what Ben-hadad’s alliance was to Ahab, that of Ahab was to Jehoshaphat, and it served his purpose in spite of the opposition of the prophets.1 The strained relations between the two countries were relaxed, and the severed tribes on both sides of the frontier set about repairing their losses; while Hiel the Bethelite at length set about rebuilding Jericho on behalf of Samaria,* Jehoshaphat was collecting around him a large army, and strengthening himself on the west against the Philistines and on the south against the Bedawin of the desert.** The marriage of his eldest son Jehoram*** with Athaliah subsequently bound the two courts together by still closer ties;**** mutual-visits were exchanged, and it was on the occasion of a stay made by Jehoshaphat at Jezreel that the expedition against Eamoth was finally resolved on.