in their train. We read of his building an ivory palace and founding new cities, the effect perhaps of a share in the flourishing commerce of Phoenicia.[1] The material prosperity of his reign, which is comparable with that of Solomon a century before, was overshadowed by the religious changes which his marriage involved. Although he was a worshipper of Yahweh, as the names of his children prove (cp. also xxii. 5 seq.), his wife was firmly attached to the worship of the Tyrian Baal, Melkart, and led by her he gave a great impulse to this cult by building a temple in honour of Baal in Samaria. This roused the indignation of those prophets whose aim it was to purify the worship of Yahweh (see Elijah.) During Ahab’s reign Moab, which had been conquered by his father, remained tributary; Judah, with whose king, Jehoshaphat, he was allied by marriage, was probably his vassal; only with Damascus is he said to have had strained relations. The one event mentioned by external sources is the battle at Ḳarḳar (perhaps Apamea), where Shalmaneser II. of Assyria fought a great confederation of princes from Cilicia, N. Syria, Israel, Ammon and the tribes of the Syrian desert (854 B.C.) Here Aḥabbu Sir’lai (Ahab the Israelite) with Baasha, son of Ruḥub (Reḥob) of Ammon and nine others are allied with Bir-’idri (Ben-hadad), Ahab’s contribution being reckoned at 2000 chariots and 10,000 men. The numbers are comparatively large and possibly include forces from Tyre, Judah, Edom and Moab. The Assyrian king claimed a victory, but his immediate return and subsequent expeditions in 849 and 846 against a similar but unspecified coalition seem to show that he met with no lasting success. According to the Old Testament narratives, however, Ahab with 7000 troops had previously overthrown Ben-hadad and his thirty-two kings, who had come to lay siege to Samaria, and in the following year obtained a remarkable victory over him at Aphek, probably in the plain of Sharon (1 Kings xx.). A treaty was made whereby Ben-hadad restored the cities which his father had taken from Ahab’s father (i.e. Omri, but see xv. 20, 2 Kings xiii. 25), and trading facilities between Damascus and Samaria were granted. A late popular story (xx. 35-42, akin in tone to xii. 33–xiii. 34) condemned Ahab for his leniency and foretold the destruction of the king and his land. Three years later, war broke out on the east of Jordan, and Ahab with Jehoshaphat of Judah went to recover Ramoth-Gilead and was mortally wounded (xxii.). He was succeeded by his sons (Ahaziah and Jehoram).
It is very difficult to obtain any clear idea of the order of these events (LXX. places 1 Kings xxi. immediately after xix.). How the hostile kings of Israel and Syria came to fight a common enemy, and how to correlate the Assyrian and Biblical records, are questions which have perplexed all recent writers. The reality of the difficulties will be apparent from the fact that it has been suggested that the Assyrian scribe wrote “Ahab” for his son “Jehoram” (Kamphausen, Chronol. d. hebr. Kön., Kittel), and that the very identification of the name with Ahab of Israel has been questioned (Horner, Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., 1898, p. 244).[2] Whilst the above passages in 1 Kings view Ahab not unfavourably, there are others which give a less friendly picture. The tragic murder of Naboth (see Jezebel), an act of royal encroachment, stirred up popular resentment just as the new cult aroused the opposition of certain of the prophets. The latter found their champion in Elijah, whose history reflects the prophetic teaching of more than one age. (See Kings.) His denunciation of the royal dynasty, and his emphatic insistence on the worship of Yahweh and Yahweh alone, form the keynote to a period which culminated in the accession of Jehu, an event in which Elijah’s chosen disciple Elisha was the leading figure.
The allusions to the statutes and works of Omri and Ahab in Mic. vi. 16 may point to legislative measures of these kings, and the reference to the incidents at the building of Jericho (1 Kings xvi. 34) may be taken to show that foundation sacrifices, familiar in nearly all parts of the world, were not unknown in Israel at this period.[3] This has in fact been confirmed by excavation in Palestine.
Another Ahab is known only as an impious prophet in the time of the Babylonian exile (Jer. xxix. 21). (S. A. C.)
’AḤAI, of Sabḥa, an 8th-century Talmudist of high renown. He was author of Quaestiones (Sheiltoth), a collection of homilies (at once learned and popular) on Jewish law and ethics. This is recorded to have been the first work written by a Jewish scholar after the completion of the Talmud.
AHASUERUS (the Latinized form of the Hebrew אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ; in LXX. Ἀσσούηρος, once in Tobit Ἀσύηρος), a royal Persian or Median name occurring in three of the books of the Old Testament and in one of the books of the Apocrypha. In every case the identification of the person named is a matter of controversy.
In Dan. ix. 1 Ahasuerus is the father of Darius the Mede, who “was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans” after the conquest of Babylon and death of Belshazzar. Who this Darius was is one of the most difficult questions in ancient history. Nabonidos (Nabunaid, Nabu-nahid) was immediately succeeded by Cyrus, who ruled the whole Persian empire. Darius may possibly have acted under Cyrus as governor of Babylon, but this view is not favoured by Dan. vi. 1, vi. 25, for Darius (v. 31) is said to have been sixty-two years old at the time (638 B.C.). This would make him contemporary with Nebuchadrezzar, which agrees with Tob. xiv. 15, where we read “of the destruction of Nineveh, which Nebuchadnezzar and Ahasuerus took captive.” As a matter of fact, however, Cyaxares and Nabopolassar were the conquerors of Nineveh, and the latter was the father of Nebuchadrezzar. Cyrus did, on ascending the throne of Babylon, appoint a governor of the province, but his name was Gobryas, the son of Mardonius. The truth is, no doubt, as Prof. Sayce points out, that the book of Daniel was not meant to be strictly historical. As Prof. Driver says, “tradition, it can hardly be doubted, has here confused persons and events in reality distinct” (Literature of the Old Test. (6) p. 500).
In Ezra iv. 6 Ahasuerus is mentioned as a king of Persia, to whom the enemies of the Jews sent representations opposing the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem. Here the sequence of the reigns in the Biblical writer and in the profane historians—in the one, Cyrus, Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, Darius; in the other, Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius—led in the past (Ewald, &c.) to the identification of Ahasuerus with Cambyses (529–522 B.C.), son of Cyrus. The name Khshayārshā, however, has been found in Persian inscriptions, and has been thought to be equivalent to the Xerxes (485–465 B.C.) of the Greeks. On Babylonian tablets both the forms Khishiarshu and Akkashiarshi occur amongst others. Modern scholars, therefore, identify the Ahasuerus of Ezra with Xerxes.
In the book of Esther the king of Persia is called Ahasuerus (rendered in LXX. “Artaxerxes” throughout). The identification of Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes I. Longimanus, the son and successor of Xerxes, though countenanced by Josephus, deserves little consideration. Most students are agreed that he must be a monarch of the Achaemenian dynasty, earlier than Artaxerxes I.; and opinion is divided between Darius Hystaspes and Xerxes. In support of the former view it is alleged, among other things, that Darius was the first Persian king of whom it could be said, as in Esther i. 1, that he “reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces”; and that it was also the distinction of Darius that (Esther x. 1) he laid “a tribute upon the land and upon the isles of the sea” (cf. Herod. iii. 89). In support of the identification with Xerxes it is alleged (1) that the Hebrew ’Aḥashvērosh is the natural equivalent of the old Persian Khshayarsha, the true name of Xerxes; (2) that there is a striking similarity of character between the Xerxes of Herodotus and the Ahasuerus of Esther; (3) that certain coincidences in dates and events
- ↑ Ahab’s ivory palace found its imitators (1 Kings xxii. 39; Am. iii. 15). The ivory was probably brought by the Phoenicians from Cyprus or from one of the works on the coast of Asia Minor.
- ↑ See the discussions by Cheyne, Ency. Bib. col. 91 seq., and by Whitehouse, Dict Bib. i. 53.
- ↑ See Trumbull, Threshold Covenant, pp. 46 sqq.; Haddon, Study of Man, pp. 347 sqq.; P. Sartori, Zeitschr. für Ethnologie, 1898, pp. 1 seq.
