DALLEY, Stephanie - Yahweh in Hamath in the 8th Century (1990)

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Yahweh in Hamath in the 8th Century BC: Cuneiform Material and Historical DeductionsAuthor(s): Stephanie DalleySource: Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 40, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1990), pp. 21-32Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1519260Accessed: 15/12/2009 08:43

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Vetus Testamentum LX, 1 (1990)

YAHWEH IN HAMATH IN THE 8TH CENTURY BC:CUNEIFORM MATERIAL AND HISTORICAL

DEDUCTIONS1

by

STEPHANIE DALLEY

Oxford

Cuneiform clay tablets are a rich source of personal names, and

they often give valuable details of location or nationality in

precisely dated records. Because many names take the form of a

phrase or short sentence which incorporates the name of a god or

goddess, we can trace the popularity of deities at different times

over a span of some two thousand years, and we can sometimesassign a person to a particular city-state on the basis of that divineelement. In the case of Judah and Israel, we know from the OldTestament that the cult of Yahweh under that name was central toHebrew worship in Jerusalem and Samaria, from some point earlyin the Iron Age. Therefore when a name compounded withYahweh is written in a cuneiform text of the Iron Age, whether theman is based in Palestine or whether he is far from home, he is

assumed to be an Israelite. J. H. Tigay's recent study2 of personalnames from Palestine has shown clearly and convincingly that

Judah and Israel were relatively monotheistic early in the Iron Age.In general the god name is the most easily recognized element;

but in the case of the name Yahweh written in cuneiform there aresome unusual possibilities for ambiguity.3 In 8th and 7th centurynames the element that may be interpreted as Yahweh is written

The author is grateful to Professor E. W. Nicholson and Dr J. Day for theirhelp. A draft of the argument was presented at an OT seminar in Oxford inNovember 1986, and a fresh version to the 64th meeting of the Society for OldTestament Study in Oxford in July 1988.

2 You Shall Have No Other Gods (Atlanta, 1986).3 J. Boardman et al. (ed.), Cambridge Ancient History III/1 (3rd edn, 1982), p.

472; pp. 489-90; M. Weippert in E. Meissner et al. (ed.), Reallexikon derAssyriologie, s.v. "Jahwe".


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STEPHANIE DALLEY

IA, IA-u ia-a-u and i-u.4 The sign IA can be read as ia, ii and iu,and so the first two spellings can be taken either as Yu, correspond-ing to the later from Y6 in Hebrew, or as Ya'u. The lengthenedwriting ia-a-u' contains the vowel a which acts as a mater ectionis forthe ambiguous IA sign, and may either be an explicit writing forthe shorter forms, or an alternative to them, just as Hebrew hasalternatives Yahu and Y6. In the first position, as in Yau-bi'di, thedivine name takes the divine determinative, but in the second posi-tion as in Izri-Yau it does not. In the informal military lists fromNimrud the element Yau never takes the divine determinative.This inconsistency is very common among divine names which arewritten phonetically;5 Kubaba the goddess of Carchemish gets thesame treatment; so do Si' and Allaya.6 At this period hypocoristicendings are written almost invariably as or a-a, with which thereis no possibility for confusion. By contrast, in names of the 2ndmillennium BC, the hypocoristic ending ia is eminently confusible,and this ambiguity led to some ill-founded claims that Yahweh hadbeen discovered in texts of that period. Therefore, various attemptsto find Yahweh-bearing names in the Bronze Age tablets from thearchives of Ebla,7 Mari, Rimah,8 Alalakh and Ugarit havefoundered and none has found general acceptance. No such nameshave been found among the Amarna letters, which give the namesof many rulers and high officials in Palestine. There is no reasonfrom cuneiform material to question the view that the worship ofYahweh began in Sinai or southern Palestine in the very lateBronze Age and spread northwards around the turn of the millen-

nium. Surprisingly, however, most scholars accept a close com-

4 See Reallexikon, s.v. "Jau-bi'di", and s.v. "Izri-Yau", and Dalley, "Foreignchariotry and cavalry in the armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II", Iraq 47

(1985), p. 32.5 G. R. Driver, in his Appendix to S. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis (12th edn,

London, 1926), pp. 440-4, thought the Assyrians did not recognize Yau as adivine element in names because it usually lacked the divine determinative; and

that where is is found, the text would have been written by a Jewish scribe.6 S. M. Dalley and J. N. Postgate, Cunetform Textsfrom Nimrud III, TabletsfromFort Shalmaneser (Oxford, 1984), Kubaba-ilaya and Kubaba-suri, Si'-ramu and Si'-qatar; Ubru-Allaya in nos 47 and 48.

7 See H.-P. Miiller, "Gab es in Ebla ein GottJa?", Zeitschriftfiir Assyriologie 70(1980), pp. 70-92.

8 F. Pomponio, review of S. Dalley et al., The Old Babylonian tablets rom Tell alRimah, in Oriens Antiquus 16 (1977), pp. 335-6.

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YAHWEH IN HAMATH IN THE 8TH CENTURY BC

parison of Yahweh's imagery with that of El and Bacal in theBronze

Agemyths from Ugarit.9

The Old Testament tends to promote the view that Yahweh was

worshipped solely by the people of Israel and Judah, largelythrough the institution of the Covenant, which E. W. Nicholson10and others maintain cannot have been earlier than the 8th century.Quite outside the scope of the Old Testament lies the questionwhether at that time Yahweh was worshipped beyond the bordersof those kingdoms."1 There is indeed cuneiform evidence indicatingthat he was worshipped in inland Syria in the 8th century B.C.

In 738 B.C. the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III took over 19districts of the powerful kingdom of Hamath on the Orontes Riverin North Syria, because they had defected to a king named Azri-Yau. The incident is described in several versions of the Assyrianrecords. One of the tablets which described the event was broken,but was restored to read: "Izri-Yau the Judean". The word for

Judean was clear, and Izri-Yau was taken to be a phonetic variantof Azri-Yau. Azri-Yau was recognized as equivalent to the biblical

Azariah, which is given as a form of the name of king Uzziah ofJudah.

There were, however, a number of difficulties over this inter-

pretation. First, it seemed much more likely that the northern

kingdom of Israel would be allied with Hamath, rather than thesouthern kingdom of Judah. Second, however hard the

chronologers squeezed their evidence, it was difficult to keepUzziah alive after 740 B.C.; in fact, it was just about impossible to

have Uzziah on the throne ofJudah in 738. Third, the variant Izri-Yau for Azri-Yau was not easily explained away.

Then in 1974 a brilliant piece of research by Nadav Na'aman

produced the following results. The one fragment which seemed toname Izri-Yau as "The Judean" was reassigned and joined toanother fragment. The newly joined text was then dated to the

9 J. Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea (Cambridge, 1985), pp.

179-80.10 God and his People (Oxford, 1986), p. 188.1 S. R. Driver, "Recent theories on the origin and nature of the tetragram-maton", Studia Biblica (Oxford, 1885), pp. 1-20, reviewed this question in orderto refute the argument of Friedrich Delitzsch, that Yahweh was originally anAkkadian god, and to air the view of A. H. Sayce, that Yahweh was a Hittite god.Most of the names which he adduces (p. 2) do not definitely bear a Yahwehelement.

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following, 7th century, probably to the reign of Sennacherib; andthe name Izri-Yau, which had been restored in part, was shown tobe differently read as: "of my frontier and Judah", not as a per-sonal name at all. In other words, the individual cuneiform signshad been read correctly but grouped by hyphenation wrongly.12The fragment probably refers to Hezekiah, although this is not cer-tain.'3 The former and the latter readings with restorations can be

juxtaposed as follows:

[.... i]z-ri-ia-u kuria-u-da-a-a

[mi-i]s-ri-ia u kuria-u-da-a-a.The vital hyphen is entirely a matter for the reader's judgement;there is nothing in the text, not even spacing, to show where

syllables should be joined.The results of all this detail are twofold: there was a ruler named

Azri-Yau who was allied with Hamath and who did not rule Israel

orJudah; and we are left without a state to assign to the ruler Azri-Yau.14 Although the problem of a so-called "Izri-Yau the Judean"in that fragmentary text has been solved satisfactorily, a number of

modern historians continue to make a muddle over the episode,partly because of the unspoken assumption that a person with a

Yahweh-bearing name is automatically considered to belong toIsrael and Judah, and so it is impossible to write a history of ancientIsrael without bringing in this ruler Azri-Yau, who has nothing todo with Israel or Judah.

At this point, another horrible possibility for confusion arises-and it is this which has tripped those writers of history who had

cleared the first hurdle. Aramaic inscriptions from Sam'al, whichlies in Turkey near the border with Syria, sometimes refer to

Sam'al with another name prefixed, written as y'dy. There is noevidence to show how this word was vocalized, for it does not occurin cuneiform sources; and its second consonant, aleph, is differentfrom that of Judah, which is an h. The place-name is given simplyas Sam'al in cuneiform sources. Unfortunately, however, therewere some speculative suggestions to vocalizey'dy asyaudi, ignoring

12 See J. D. Hawkins, Reallexikon der Assyriologie, s.v. "Izriyau", and s.v."Hamath".

13 R. Borger, Babylonisch-assyrische Lesestiicke (2nd ed., Rome, 1979), p. 134.14 See also Weippert, Reallexikon der Assyriologie, s.v. "Israel" and "Judah"

2e, p. 205a.

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numerous other possibilities.15 Some historians, who realized thatAzri-Yau the ruler named as leader of

Syrianrebels in

Tiglath-Pileser's campaign in 738 could not be Uzziah of Judah, did notunderstand that kurYaudaya in the rehyphenated fragments was no

longer relevant to the matter of the Assyrian enemy Azri-Yau, andseized upon Sam'al as a likely home for the ruler Azri-Yau.

Of recent historians, J. Bright, in his revised History of Israel (3rdedn, London, 1981), continues to maintain that we have an Azri-Yau of Yaudi who is Uzziah of Judah in 738 BC; and H. W. F.

Saggs,The

Mightthat was

Assyria (London, 1984), simply saysthat

Azri-Yau of Yaudi has been identified by some as king of Judah.S. Herrmann's revised History of Israel (London, 1981) = GeschichteIsraels (2nd edn., Munich, 1980) says that Azri-Yau of Yaudi in 738BC should not be identified with Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah, but

goes on to say that he was king of Yaudi in North Syria. H. Don-ner, writing in J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller (ed.), Israelite and

Judaean History (London, 1977), pp. 424-5, writes: "One cannotexclude the possibility that his [Azri-Yau's] country was the north

Syrian state of Ya'udi-Sam'al... A king named Azriau, however,is not attested there." J. A. Soggin, A History of Israel (London,1984), discusses the episode as though the old view, that Azri-Yauis biblical Uzziah, is still possible though unlikely, and then adds,as an afterthought, that Na'aman seems to have re-attributed the

episode to the time of Hezekiah.The only historian who rejects the relevance of the whole episode

for biblical history is Y. Aharoni, whose Land of the Bible (London),revised in 1979 by A. F. Rainey, made the clear but undetailed anddismissive statement that "the assumption that Uzziah's pre-eminence is also demonstrated by his leading a coalition of westernstates in taking a stand against Tiglath-pileser III in 738 B.C. hasnow been refuted" (p. 347).

To go back briefly to the possibility raised by Donner: in fact, bya remarkable piece of good fortune, we can absolutely exclude the

possibility that Azri-Yau ruled Sam'al in 738. The Aramaic

inscriptions of Bar-rakkab (or Bar-rakib) king of Sam'al are con-cerned with the reign of Tiglath-pileser III. Bar-rakkab's father

15 See Reallexikon, s.v. "Jaudu", and Hawkins, Cambridge Ancient History III/1,p. 397. Cuneiform spellings of Judah are now collected by R. Zadok, RepertoireGeographique des Textes Cuneiformes 8 (Tiibingen, 1985).

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Panammu was king of Y'DY-Sam'al before him, and had been puton the

throne,after an outbreak of violent

trouble, by Tiglath-pileser. Panammu had been on the throne for long enough to bringthe country out of hard times into prosperity, and had been proudto serve alongside the Assyrian king in the Assyrian army. For hisfaithful service and valour he was granted towns and lands adjacentto his kingdom by the victorious Tiglath-pileser around 740 BCafter the three-year siege of Arpad. Panammu was killed in action,still serving the Assyrian king, during a campaign in the vicinity ofDamascus which took place in 733/732, and his body was takenback to Assyria for an honourable burial. His son Bar-rakkab fol-lowed in his footsteps as a staunchly pro-Assyrian king, and heboasted that he had "run at the wheel of my lord the king of

Assyria". Thus we know for certain that Panammu was the pro-Assyrian ruler of Y'DY-Sam'al in 738 B.C. and we can absolutelyexclude the possibility that the anti-Assyrian Azri-Yau was king inthe same place.

So where did Azri-Yau rule? Not in Hamath itself, for the rulerat that time is known to have been one Eni-ilu, probably up untilabout 738 B.C. It has been suggested that he ruled the kingdom ofHatarikka/Hazrak,16 a small state thought to lie somewherebetween Aleppo and Hamath or in the vicinity of Damascus,17perhaps more than 150 miles away from Sam'al (with which it hadno known ties), and it may at this time have been no more than oneof the 19 districts of Hamath which opposed Tiglath-pileser in 738.It cannot have been less than 250 miles away from Samaria, and

the powerful kingdoms of Hamath and Damascus lay between itand Israel. Thus it was by no means a near neighbour of Israel.The interesting fact which emerges from so much muddle and con-fusion is this: that there was a ruler in North Syria in 738 who borea name compounded with Yahweh. Since a single example is nevera firm basis for deduction, we shall proceed to our second example.

At the end of Shalmaneser V's reign, perhaps in 722 B.C.,Samaria fell to the Assyrians. His successor Sargon II was not in

direct line of succession and usurped the throne of Assyria. Soonafter his accession, two terrible events took place: the Assyrian

16 Hawkins, Reallexikon, s.v. "Izri-Yau", and s.v. "Luhuti" for Hatarikka asa part of Hamath.

17 See now S. Parpola, State Archives of Assyria I (Helsinki, 1987), p. 134, n. 171.

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army was heavily defeated at Der, east of the Tigris; and there wasa mutiny in the heart of Assyria which Sargon publicly admitted,and said he put down only with the greatest difficulty. Hardly sur-

prising is it, in such circumstances, that Samaria scarcely con-sidered itself subject to Assyria, threw off the recently imposed yokeof vassaldom, and joined an anti-Assyrian coalition which was led

by Hamath under its king Yau-bi'di whose capital city lay about220 miles away from Samaria as the crow flies. The coalitionbetween Israel and Hamath was probably active around 720/719B.C., possibly longer. Scholarly comment on this incident has

mainly been restricted to the part played by Israel. Little notice hasbeen paid to the fact that the leader of Hamath has a name com-

pounded with Yahweh, although both E. Meyer and W. F.

Albright thought that he must have been an Israelite abroad, a viewalso followed tentatively by Cogan and Tadmor.'8 If we ignore the

argument which is under debate, that all Yahweh-bearing names

belong to Israelites, the second example reinforces the first, and

suggests that Yahweh was worshipped in North Syria in the mid to

late 8th century.A third example comes not from cuneiform sources but from the

OT from the time of king David, when Toi or Tou the king ofHamath sent his son, named both Joram and Hadoram, to con-

gratulate David.19 Unless the boy changed his name to Joram whenhe went to Jerusalem purely as a mark of respect for local custom,we may either agree with Malamat ([n. 18], pp. 6-7) thatHamathites adopted Yahweh-worship from Jerusalem when theycame into Solomon's sphere of influence and then paid tribute toDavid, or we may suppose that the worship of Yahweh was alreadyindigenous in Hamath.

The kings of Hamath in the time of Shalmaneser III were neo-Hittites, Irhuleni and his son Urtatamis, but neo-Hittite inscrip-tions of this time indicate that a Semitic goddess Ba'alat, pro-nounced Pahalatis, was the national deity (Hawkins [n. 15], p.396). In view of this, there is no need to posit a change in religious

18 See A. Malamat, "Aspects of the Foreign Policies of David and Solomon",JNES 22 (1963), p. 7, n. 27; M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (Garden City,New York, 1988), p. 166. Analysis of the name to avoid Yau as a divine element

by E. Lipiiiski, VT 21 (1971), pp. 371-3, has no factual basis.19 2 Sam. viii 9 and 1 Chron. xviii 10. The interchange Had/Jo confirms that

Yau is a divine, not a verbal element here.

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beliefs when the dynasty changed from neo-Hittites to Arameansunder Zakkur

(or Zakir)in the mid 8th

century.At this point we need to ask what implications are latent in thechoice of a god as a name element for a king at this period. As faras the evidence goes, it seems to show clearly that the king's nameuses either the national, patron deity as the divine element (Bacalin Tyre, Chemosh in Moab, Qaus in Edom, Assur in Assyria andMarduk in Babylon) or the name of another major deity whose

worship was important in that country, such as Nergal or Nabu in

Babylon, or Sin in Assyria. We still do not know for certainwhether a man would often adopt a new and more appropriatename when he became crown prince or king; but it is extremelyunlikely that he would include, in his name as king, a god who wasneither his country's patron deity nor even worshipped there as a

major god. In other words, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that,in the late 8th century both before and after the fall of Samaria,Yahweh was worshipped as a major god in Hamath and its vicinity.

Could Azri-Yau and Yau-bi'di both be Israelite adventurers whohad seized power in two separate Syrian states? There would be nocertain parallels. The only possible one is Yamani of Ashdod,sometimes interpreted as "the Ionian" or "the Greek", but likelyto be a Semite who bore the same name as the recent Minister forOil in Saudi Arabia.20 With no certain parallel nor any allusion tosuch an event, neither in the Old Testament nor in Greek tradi-tions, this possibility should probably be discarded. Cogan andTadmor ([n. 18], p. 166) maintain that Azri-Yau must be an

Israelite name because the non-Israelite pronunciation would beexpressed with d, not z. In fact, the Assyrians at that time wereinconsistent in their spelling, as can be seen from the alternation hi-in-za-ni and hi-in-da-na, a place on the middle Euphrates (Parpola[n. 17]. p. 237); and in personal names they seem to have writtend always in idri, but z always in azrilazuri, etc., although there aretoo few examples to formulate a firm rule. Another alternative isto imagine both rulers as men who had worked for decades as

chariotry experts for the very top people in the royal court, andeventually were promoted to power in an internal coup. I have

20 See K. Tallqvist, Assyrian Personal Names (Helsingfors, 1914), s.v., and H.Tadmor, "The campaigns of Sargon II of Assur", Journal of Cuneiform Studies 12(1958), p. 80, n. 217.

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recently shown from neo-Assyrian administrative texts found atNimrud that Israelites from Samaria worked for the

Assyrian kingSargon II in the late 8th century as highly trusted mercenariesskilled in chariotry (Dalley, n. 4); and it is possible that they didthe same for rulers in the area of Hamath. If this hypothesis werecorrect, we would have to suppose that usurpation by a highlyplaced Israelite resident abroad happened in two different Syrianstates, Hamath and (?)Hatarikka, and that neither ruler saw fit totake on a new name proclaiming his adopted nation's divine

patronage. Both of these hypothetical events would have taken

place before the conquest of Samaria displaced a large number ofIsraelites, and so cannot be linked to that event. Moreover, noneof the 8th-century prophets refers to any such events. These are

significant difficulties. It is simpler to take the explanation thatAzri-Yau and Yau-bi'di were indigenous rulers of two north Syrianstates where Yahweh was worshipped as a major god.

A close relationship did exist between the northern kingdom ofIsrael and Hamath in the late 8th century: they fought togetheragainst Sargon II as allies, and men of Hamath were deported toSamaria (2 Kings xvii 24), rather surprisingly in view of thatalliance. But those two episodes cannot, of course, account forearlier kings of Hamath using names compounded with Yahweh.

When Sennacherib's rab-saqeh ddressed the people of Jerusalemin 701 BC (2 Kings xviii 34; Isa. xxxvi 19) he said: "Hath any ofthe gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand ofthe king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and of Arpad?"As Cogan and Tadmor have pointed out ([n. 18], p. 233), Sen-nacherib is referring to victories long past, for Hamath wasdefeated 19 years before, and Arpad 39 years previously. Thiswould have been obvious to the rab-sdqeh's audience. If we take thewords as they stand-and Cogan and Tadmor among many others

accept them-they do indeed imply that, up until 720 and 740 B.C.Hamath and Arpad respectively had depended on Yahweh for theirdelivrance, and he had failed them. Of course, this does not mean

that the nature ofJudah's religion was identical with that of Hamahand Arpad; the Sefire inscriptions from Arpad name Elyon theJebusite god of Jerusalem after Hadad of Aleppo, the Seven Godsand El. But the words of the rab-sdqeh onfirm that the Hamathitesof the 8th century worshipped a god in common with the Israelites,and that this was a fact well known to the Assyrians.

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There is some evidence from North-West Arabia which mayindicate a continuing connexion between the worship of Yahwehand the religion of the Hamath area during the Persian period. 2

Kings xvii 30, tells us that the chief deity of Hamath was Ashima,and there is now independent evidence of her existence from theoasis city of Tayma. Two Aramaic inscriptions on stone are nowknown from there, the one discovered by the explorer Charles

Doughty in the last century and the other only recently discoveredand published.21 Neither one mentions Yahweh, but they bothname Ashima, the deity of Hamath. (The newly found inscriptioncorrects a reading on the older stone from Asherah to Ashima.) Itis almost certain that Tayma was inhabited by a number of Jewsor Yahweh-worshippers at that time, as were several neighbouringoasis towns; this has long been the deduction drawn, both from a

Qumran fragment concerning the healing of Nabonidus by a

Jewish exorcist in Arabia, and from early Islamic sources whichshow that those oasis towns which are named as conquered byNabonidus in his Harran inscription were occupied chiefly by Jewsin the time of Muhammed.22

At Elephantine in the Persian period offerings lists show thatYahweh was worshipped there together with Asham-Bethel,possibly a form of Ashima.23 In view of these somewhat indirectindications that Yahweh was worshipped with Ashima, the readingof Amos viii 14 as "Ashima of Samaria" rather than as "sin ofSamaria" may gain credence, for it was mainly disfavoured on the

grounds that Ashima was unknown in Israel.24

Two suggestions may be made as a result of this conclusion. Thefirst is that it provides a possible route for the transmission of

Ugaritic imagery to the Sinaitic god Yahweh in Jerusalem; the ter-

ritory of Hamath certainly stretched to the coast at Simirra, for thattown gave its name to a province of Hamath in the time of Tiglath-

21 A. Livingstone et al., "Taima': recent soundings and new inscribed mate-rial", Atlal 7 (1983), pp. 108-11, with bibliography.

22

C. J. Gadd, "The Harran Inscriptions of Nabonidus", Anatolian Studies8

(1958), pp. 80ff.23 E. G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri (New Haven, Conn., and

London 1953), pp. 87ff.; see also J. A. Soggin, Introduction o the Old Testament

(revised edn, London, 1976), p. 486.24 H. W. Wolff, Biblischer Kommentar, Amos, (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1969), p. 372.

I am grateful to Dr G. I. Davies for drawing my attention to this point at theSOTS meeting.

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Pileser III. The second is that the dilemma faced by Hezekiah and

expressed bythe

rab-saqehwas one to which a

covenant, reinforcinga special relationship with Yahweh, could have provided a solution:Yahweh had been powerless to save his worshippers in Arpad andHamath because they worshipped other gods too, but he wouldsave Judah if they worshipped him alone.

Finally, we should look at how the close relationship between thetwo widely separate kingdoms, Israel and Hamath, might havearisen. We have already looked with scepticism upon the theorythat Israelite adventurers seized power so far from home. Another

possibility is to look at the period before the formation of Judah andIsrael. When Yahweh moved northwards from Sinai, he wasassimilated with El. The Assyrians thought of Yahweh as El (whichfor them may have been a title for the head of an "old" generationof pantheon), and give a variant of Yau-bi)di's name as El-bi'di.The long and complex process whereby the Hebrews enteredPalestine from Transjordan, bringing the worship of Yahweh withthem, is represented in very simple terms in the OT. It would notbe contrary to current thinking to suppose that some bands ofHebrews failed to enter Palestine and continued their migrationnorthwards.25 If so, we may see the pattern of the 12 tribes as a tidyscheme imposed upon a less orderly reality.

Alternatively, the cause of Yahweh's worship in Hamath may liein the expansion of Israel under Jeroboam II (c. 782-748). Mostcommentators, however, declare as corrupt 2 Kings xiv 28, andthere seems to be fairly general acceptance that the border of Israel

did not extend beyond Lebo-Hamath, at the southern border of themaximum kingdom of Hamath where it meets the territory ofDamascus.26 Lebo-Hamath lies some 400 km. south of the city ofHamath, although from its name one tends to think of it as closelyassociated.

It would be rash to press for one or other of these possibilitieswithout some more evidence. But one clear and important conclu-sion can be drawn. When a cuneiform record or an Aramaic

25 R. de Vaux, The Early History of Israel (London, 1978) = Histoire ancienned'Israel (Paris, 1971). M. Weippert, "The Israelite 'Conquest' and the evidencefrom Transjordan", in F. M. Cross (ed.), Symposia (Cambridge, Mass., 1979),pp. 15-34.

26 Y. Aharoni, Land of the Bible (2nd edn, London 1979), pp. 72-3.

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ostracon found outside the Hebrew homeland mentions a personwhose name is

compoundedwith

Yahweh,and who lives outside

Palestine and has no gentilic information attached to him, weshould not assume that the man came from Israel or Judah. He

may come from one of several cities in Syria where people worship-ped Yahweh as a major god in the 8th century BC.

Documents

DALLEY, Stephanie - Yahweh in Hamath in the 8th Century (1990)