The Oxford History of the Biblical World (52 page)

All this is the subject of a rapid-fire report in the biblical text. Afterwards we learn that Omri faced a rival, one Tibni, to whom half of the people were loyal, and that it took several years to resolve this clash in Omri’s favor. Omri then “reigned for twelve years, six of them in Tirzah” (1 Kings 16.21–23). The Chronicler never mentions Omri. There are two noteworthy gaps in our information about Omri. We hear nothing about his origins within the tribal system. And there is no report of a prophet at work; if anything, the military seems to be the instigating factor, and neither the sources nor the editor give any hint of divine approval or disapproval. This is odd in a historical presentation that has already used prophetic narrative to account for transitions in government and that will do so again in what follows. Only one notice appears about Omri’s activities as king: how he acquired the hill of Samaria, fortified
it, and named it after its preceding owner, Shemer. Shechem and Tirzah recede into the shadows, and Samaria takes over as capital.

Other historical sources, however, suggest that with Omri and his son Ahab, Israel entered upon an era of strong leadership and political—even international—prominence. The Mesha inscription on the Moabite Stone credits the Omri dynasty with regaining control of Moab, all the way south to the midpoint of the Dead Sea at the Arnon River. And as we have already seen, Ahab, Omri’s son, is named by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser as a major player in the confrontation at Qarqar in 853
BCE
, with a substantial military force. The nomenclature
house of Omri
will in Assyrian records continue to be a designation for the northern kingdom, long after the dynasty ended.

There is substantial archaeological evidence of Omri’s and Ahab’s activities. At Samaria, clarification of the stratigraphy and pottery is emerging from a meticulous analysis by Ron E. Tappy, employing the field diaries and sketches of Kathleen Kenyon as she explored the region of the “ivory house,” dug in 1932–35. Confirming the biblical mention of Omri’s purchase of the estate of Shemer, archaeology reveals that Omri built the first structures of a citadel on the remains of a preceding establishment. He constructed an enclosure wall, laid a yellow plaster flooring as living surface within it, and built a complex of rooms. Ahab then extended the citadel’s size with a casemate wall (cross-walls joining two parallel wall lines to form chambers, or “casemates”) outside the line of Omri’s structure, laid a new white surfacing that in some cases displaced Omri’s yellow one, and expanded the interior complex of rooms. Ahab’s citadel covered some 1.6 hectares (4 acres), measuring 89 meters × 178 meters (290 feet × 584 feet).

The walls of major structures in both the Omri and Ahab phases were built of finely squared blocks of stone, called ashlars, fitted together so well that no chinking was needed. They were laid up in “header-stretcher” style, a hallmark of royal building technique in both Israel and Judah throughout the monarchy. Another hallmark is the use of “proto-Aeolic” capitals, six of which were uncovered along the east limit of the citadel; at Samaria they cannot be dated securely to the Omri-Ahab phases, but they may have topped pilasters at an eastern entrance during this period. Quarrying and shaping these ashlars and capitals required skilled workers, as well as large numbers of people to haul and lift; they lived, presumably, elsewhere on the hill of Samaria, outside the citadel, in homes that have not been the target of archaeological study. Within the citadel compound, the earlier Harvard excavations revealed parts of the palace complex that also show two phases of construction, probably attributable first to Omri and then to Ahab.

In the DH’s standard evaluating verses describing Ahab (1 Kings 22.39–40), mention is made of an “ivory house that he built.” Kenyon’s excavations found quantities of burned ivory furniture inlay, as well as figures carved in the round, in the debris of the structure designated “ivory house” on the plan. Tappy’s scrutiny of Kenyon’s diaries has raised serious doubts about whether any of the ivories belong to Omri-Ahab layers, and Tappy has shown that Jehu reused the Omri-Ahab structures without destroying them. The ivories come, with one possible exception, from layers higher in the stratigraphy; more will be said about them in the section on Jeroboam II.

“And all the cities that he built,” says 1 Kings 22.39 of Ahab. It is Ahab to whom archaeologists assign major building projects at other key northern sites, notably Dan, Hazor, Megiddo, and Tirzah (Tell el-Farah [N]). He expanded the sanctuary platform at Dan to form a square of ashlar masonry 19 meters × 19 meters (62 feet × 62 feet), with steps leading down from it to an enclosed precinct, in addition to building fortifications and a planned city with cobbled streets. Apparently, Ahab continued the Jeroboam religious arrangement of two sanctuary centers; one “horn” of a large altar has turned up in the precinct.

Ahab seems also to have expanded greatly the settlement at Hazor (Stratum VIII), constructing a citadel at the neck of the bottle-shaped mound. Two proto-Aeolic capitals found there support archaeologists’ suppositions about pilastered entrances to public structures dating from the time of Ahab at Samaria. The citadel stands at the opposite end of town from a storage complex with a granary, on a terrace at the east; this suggests that Hazor was both a military strong point and a store-city for agricultural supplies, either for military or for public consumption.

A more spectacular find at Hazor is the elaborate shaft and tunnel cut deep into the mound’s interior, which gave access to the water table beneath. The work attests to the builders’ technical knowledge of hydrology, as well as to their sensible recognition that it is safer to protect the city by not opening a tunnel to an outside spring and thereby giving an enemy possible access (recall David’s capture of Jerusalem in 2 Sam. 5.8). Presumably much of the workforce that built Hazor lived in the houses and thrived in the shops that fill the rest of the hilltop, a total space of roughly 6.5 hectares (16 acres) with a population of perhaps 1,500.

At Megiddo the Iron Age stratigraphy is disputed, but a majority of scholars still tend to assign the origin of Stratum IVA to Ahab, including the laying out of huge areas as chariot parks adjacent to pillared buildings identified as stables for the horses. Another large amount of space within the massively fortified city was given to the water system, which in this case involved a tunnel leading outside the fortifications to the spring. A major public building at the east edge of town has been proposed as a palace, although it does not occupy the usually favored location—upwind, at the west edge of town. Megiddo does not manifest changes in layout during the ninth and eighth centuries
BCE
as Samaria and Hazor do; its Stratum IVA plan persists until the end of the Divided Monarchy.

Tirzah shows similar continuity throughout the ninth and eighth centuries, although there is tantalizing evidence of an unfinished phase of building (Stratum VIIc) that might belong to the rapid series of events in the transition from Baasha’s dynasty to Omri. The next phase (Stratum VHd) is a well-planned city; Ahab may have been its founder.

Ahab, then, was a builder, and, to judge from Megiddo and Hazor, part of what he built was military. The most explicit indication of his military strength comes from the report of a crucial battle to which the Bible makes no reference, the battle of Qarqar in 853
BCE
. Information about it comes from Assyrian sources. Assyria had begun looking westward, seeking control of trade routes to the Mediterranean, under Ashurnasirpal, who ruled Assyria from near the beginning of Omri’s reign through much of Ahab’s. Successor to Ashurnasirpal was Shalmaneser III, who came to Assyria’s throne about 858
BCE
. Early in his reign, he began to threaten northern Syria.
In his sixth year, according to the boastful “Monolith Inscription” on which are recorded his early successes, he campaigned westward across the upper Euphrates, past Aleppo (which capitulated) into the Syrian state of Hamath along the east side of the Orontes River, well north of Damascus. At Qarqar on that river, which his inscription designates the royal city of Hamath’s ruler, Irhuleni, he met a coalition of forces from twelve locales that included Hamath, Damascus under Hadadezer, and Israel under Ahab. Ahab’s force consisted of 10,000 men and 2,000 chariots, outnumbering the 1,910 chariots supplied by all the other allies together and equaling what Shalmaneser himself threw into the battle. The Assyrian king claims to have utterly devastated his foes and captured all their chariots, cavalry, and horses—but seems himself to have stopped at Qarqar. The clash may indeed have stalled Assyrian moves westward for a time, since Shalmaneser waited four years before returning. Three further campaigns in 849, 848, and 845 are known from more formulaic records, which name the two Syrian kings and in one case speak of the twelve-king coalition. All the attacks stall in the Orontes Valley. No Israelite presence is mentioned in these accounts.

Military forces mean many men and the disruption of many families. Building enterprises imply many workers, mostly men. Both may have meant income or largesse for Israelite families, but both would have exacted hardships. In an economy based on agriculture carried out by extended families on patrimonial holdings, and on cottage industries in homes and local shops, how were human resources deployed? The Bible provides little direct information, but analogies from social and cultural anthropology cast some light. Family property rights passed from father to son (or occasionally to daughter). While high infant mortality and somewhat restricted birthrates may have prevented rapid population growth, some families found themselves with too many heirs for the system of land inheritance within the family to sustain. A family with several sons would have had to parcel out small holdings, eventually resulting in tiny, irreducible plots. In the monarchic period, no new land could be added to a family’s holdings by “pushing back the frontier,” and apparently new acquisitions by military conquest became crown property. The army, then, was probably made up of younger sons of families that could no longer divide their land. The priesthood, too, may have been drawn from this resource, and it may also have supplied the workforce that built Ahab’s cities. We cannot know whether and to what extent this process would have begun to cause the typical Israelite family hardship; presumably things went well most of the time, but prospects for economic and social difficulties loomed.

Against this background, let us try to understand the biblical depiction of the Omri-Ahab dynasty. In it the kings are not at the fore; it is the prophets who dominate the scene. The material in DH begins with a diplomatic marriage between Ahab and the daughter of King Ethbaal of Sidon. Her name is Jezebel. Apparently in accord with this alliance, Ahab is reported to have placed an altar and a temple for Baal worship in Samaria, together with an
asherah
—a pillar representing the tree sacred to the goddess Asherah, a consort of Baal. Jezebel was the patron of this establishment, Ahab the accomplice.

Onto this scene came Elijah and the divine decision to bring drought upon the land. A series of wondrous stories about the prophet’s care of the poor widow of
Zarephath removes him from contact with the king as the drought unfolds and famine strikes the land. Meanwhile it is noted that Jezebel has been killing off Yahweh’s prophets. Elijah reappears to tell Ahab that the drought will end, but in doing so he puts the blame for the drought on Ahab’s worship of the Baals. Since Baal is, among other things, deity of fertility and storm, irony pervades the unfolding drama. There ensues the mighty contest on Mount Carmel, with Elijah standing alone “against the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table” (1 Kings 18.19). The immediately succeeding chapter then shows Elijah’s flight to Mount Horeb, where his success as the lone faithful Yahwist on Mount Carmel reverses into his desolate sense of failure at the place where he will meet his divine recommission:

Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. And whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him. (1 Kings 19.15–18)

The DH and the Chronicler present the prophets as wonder-workers. In these accounts the prophets are shown as occupying a particular office and playing an accepted role in the public life of ancient Israel and Judah, including the life of the general populace. Being confronted with prophets surprises neither king nor people. In the stories of prophets whom the DH sets in the ninth-century
BCE
, notably Elijah, Elisha, and Micaiah, these men appear as lone actors—especially in conflicts with other prophetic figures saying the opposite. It is inappropriate to describe prophets as isolated eccentrics and malcontents operating as free agents. Rather, they are part of a social phenomenon, the bands and groups of prophets, such as those whom Jezebel tries to kill off as well as those who eat at her table. Even the seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal appear as a part of a support system, about whom Elijah has perhaps forgotten. Regularly, Elijah and Elisha use members of their prophetic groups as agents to carry out their prophetic tasks.

Individually or in groups, the prophets’ allegiance is to the will of Israel’s deity, to whom they have access when the deity wishes. Their visits force decision upon their audience: Is this person a true spokesperson for deity, or a fake? There is no way to avoid the recognition that the ancient historians, DH and the Chronicler, take prophets and their role as part of historical reality, whether what they have to say is palatable or not.