mentioned as being the first Assyrian king who attacked the land of Israel, cf. 2Ki 15:19. The deportation began, however, only with Tiglath-pileser, who led the East-Jordan tribes into exile, 2Ki 15:29. To him ויּגלם sing. refers. The suffix is defined by the following acc., וגו לרעוּבני; ל is, according to the later usage, nota acc.; cf. Ew. §277, e. So also before the name חלח, “to Halah,” i.e., probably the district Καλαχήνη (in Strabo) on the east side of the Tigris near Adiabene, to the north of Nineveh, on the frontier of Armenia (cf. on 2Ki 17:6). In the second book of Kings (1Ch 15:29) the district to which the two and a half tribes were sent as exiles is not accurately determined, being only called in general Asshur (Assyria). The names in our verse are there (2Ki 17:6) the names of the districts to which Shalmaneser sent the remainder of the ten tribes after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel. It is therefore questionable whether the author of the Chronicle took his account from an authority used by him, or if he names these districts only according to general recollection, in which the times of Shalmaneser and of Tiglath-pileser are not very accurately distinguished (Berth.). We consider the first supposition the more probable, not merely because he inverts the order of the names, but mainly because he gives the name הרא instead of “the cities of Media,” as it is in Kings, and that name he could only have obtained from his authorities. חבור is not the river Chaboras in Mesopotamia, which falls into the Euphrates near Circesium, for that river is called in Ezekiel כּבר, but is a district in northern Assyria, where Jakut mentions that there is both a mountain Χαβώρας on the frontier of Assyria and Media (Ptolem. vi. 1), and a river Khabur Chasaniae, which still bears the old name Khâbur, rising in the neighbourhood of the upper Zab, near Amadijeh, and falling into the Tigris below Jezirah. This Khâbur is the river of Gozan (vide on 2Ki 17:6). The word הרא appears to be the Aramaic form of the Hebrew הר, mountains, and the vernacular designation usual in the mouths of the people of the mountain land of Media, which is called also in Arabic el Jebâl (the mountains). This name can therefore only have been handed down from the exiles who dwelt there.
