TWO PROPHETS

AND A

KING NAMED

HAZAEL

The city of Damascus in Syria, is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, according to Lockyear's Bible Dictionary. Syria was called Aram or Aramea in those days. Damascus was the capital of Aram and is still the capital of modern Syria. It lies north of the Sea of Galilee and it is near to Mount Hermon. The founder of Damascus was said to be Uz, the grandson of Shem, Noah's eldest son. Aram was the name of Uz's father. Lockyear's dictionary goes on to tell us this:

Shortly after Solomon's death, the king of Damascus formed a powerful league with other Aramean states. This alliance resulted in many years of conflict between Israel and Damascus. First Ben-Hadad of Damascus defeated King Baasha of Israel [1Kin.15:16-20; 2 Chr. 16:1-4]. Later, God miraculously delivered King Ahab of Israel and his small army from the superior Syrian forces [1Kin. 20:1-30].

Even after this miraculous deliverance, Ahab made a covenant with Ben-Hadad II against God's will [1 Kin. 20:31-43]. Ahab was killed a few years later in a battle with Syria [1Kin. 22:29-38].

In the midst of these wars, the prophet Elisha was instructed by God to anoint Hazael as the new king of Damascus [1Kin. 19:15]. King Joram of Israel successfully opposed Hazael for a time [2 Kin. 13:4-5, but the situation was eventually reversed. Hazael severely oppressed both Israel and Judah during later years [2 Kin. 13:3, 22].

Elisha is the spiritual son or heir of Elijah the Tishbite. Elijah was a formidable prophet with great powers. He is described as "an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins" [2 Kin. 1:8]. Elijah is constantly on the move, for he lives in the time when Jezebel, who was the wife of Ahab, has declared death to all prophets of the Lord. He does not die when his time on earth is up, but is taken into heaven by a fiery chariot drawn by horses of fire -- or a whirlwind...or both. Before he goes, he asks his 'son' what he would have of him. Elisha asks "let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me." Elisha becomes twice as powerful as his master. In Kings I, it is Elijah whom the Lord tells to anoint Hazael the King of Syria, but it is Elisha to whom the deed actually falls.

Uz? Hazael? These names sound familiar, don't they? Little is known about Uz, but we do know a few things about Hazael. Hazael was an official of the court of Ben-Hadad I. Ben-Hadad was ill and he sent Hazael to Elisha to ask God if he would recover from his illness. Elisha told Hazael that he, himself was destined to become the king:

And Elisha said unto him, Go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the Lord hath shewed me that he shall surely die. And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed: and the man of God wept. And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strong holds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child. And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The Lord hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria. [2 Kin. 8:10-13]

The next day Hazael put Ben-Hadad out of his misery by smothering him with a thick wet cloth, and took over the throne.

Ben-Hadad means "son of Hadad." For the king to take such a name is similar to the practice of the pharohs, whose names translate into similar epithets of Ra, Horus, Amen and Set. Hadad (the thunderer) was a storm god worshipped by both the Syrians and the Phoenicians. He was later known as Rimmon, the son of Dagon (Ea). We sometimes see Rimmon mentioned as one of the fallen angels. To the Syrians, Hadad was a god of lightning, rain and fertility. He resembled the Egyptian god Resheph, as a thunder god. Resheph was known in Egypt as a warrior god, who is the same as the Semitic Aleyin/Amurru. This god is depicted wearing a crown of gazelle horns. He carries a club, spear and shield. In the Babylonian pantheon, Reshef and Hadad were equivalent to Nergal, who was the lord of the Netherworld as well as a war god and a healing god. Nergal controlled many demons called such things as Flashes of Lightning, Croucher, Scab, Stroke and Lord of the Roof, as well as the gallu-demons and umu-demons. Nergal is sometimes a son of Ea. The Caananites called Hadad "Baal" - Lord.

It is easy to see here how interchangeable were the gods of the various regions of the Middle East. This is an important idea to keep in mind, when studying mythologies. Hadad is later compared to Zeus, of the Greeks and Jupiter of the Romans, who both wield lightning bolts as godly weapons. The idea of both El Elyon and Jehovah weilding lightning bolts comes from these earlier gods. Scholars look at the "attributes" of these gods, which includes weaponry; colors and sigils or signs associated with them; and the similarities of their personal myths.

Long before this time, the Syrians, Hittites and Hivites possessed chariots and horses, which made them formidable and nearly always victorious in battles. They were expert bowmen, using compound bows. Some of the finest craftsmen in the known world lived within their borders. They had relatively well-tempered bronze swords and good shields. Other weapons included spears, pikes and maces. Many scholars believe that the Syrians were the Hyksos kings who invaded Egypt and ruled there beginning in about 1650 BCE. An amulet of one of the Hyksos pharohs shows him with a full beard and a decidedly Syrian looking hooked-nose. At the time of this story, about 800 years have passed from the time of the Hyksos kings. While they continued to do battle with the Egyptians, they never regained their foothold there. The Egyptians had learned too much from these mighty men about the art of war. Here, we can see the link with Azazel as he who "taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them... [Enoch 8:1]

The kings of Judah (Ahaziah) and Israel (Joram) were wicked men, we are told in later verses. They conspire between them to make war on Hazael in Ramoth-gilead. King Joram of Israel was seriously wounded in that battle by the Syrians, and retired to Jezreel to be healed. Ahaziah went down to Jezreel see him during his recuperation. While Joram is recuperating, Elisha sends a man to Jehu in Ramoth-gilead, and has the man anoint Jehu as the new king of Israel. Jehu then goes to Jezreel and slays Joram, and wounds Ahaziah, who eventually dies of his wounds. During the reign of Jehu's successor, Jehoahaz, Hazael oppressed Israel because "the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel." King Jehoash or Joash of Judah (who was the only decent one of the lot) made a gift of personal and Temple treasures to Hazael, as an assurance that he would not attack Jerusalem, itself. The plan seemed to have worked. We are told that Hazael turned his troops around and went home. Joash had a vested spiritual interest in seeing that the Temple of Solomon was not damaged, since he was the one who ordered the priests to repair it after long years of neglect during the reigns of Ahab and Joram.

The enigmatic Hazael moves through the eighth through thirteenth chapters of the second book of Kings like a spectre of Judgement. This seems to be intentional. Unlike just about everyone else in the book, we are told little or nothing of the King of Syria as a person. The name "Hazael" itself seems to me to be a contraction of ha'azael - "the one whom God strengthens", and another pesher. This is another name of Azazel -- Azael.

Elisha is not happy about making Hazael king, but it is God's will. Elisha never does one thing to undermine Hazael's reign -- although it seems that he could have. Instead, it seems that he is busy trying to correct the wrongs done by the house of Ahab. These chapters are filled with the treachery and scheming of five Israelite kings and one queen, Athaliah. King Jehu -- the one Elisha has anointed, is not of the house of Ahab. Jehu begins his reign all about taking care of the Lord's business. He slays the worshippers and priests of Baal, and wipes out the remaining "seventy sons" of Ahab so none of them might try to reclaim the throne in their father's name. He is the king who orders Jezebel thrown down from her palace window and to be trampled to death by horses. In the end, Jehu proves himself to be no better than those he has mercilessly slaughtered in the name of the Lord, wandering away from the covenant he made with the Lord and worshipping heathen gods, himself.

In the beginning, Hazael himself cannot conceive that he would do such things as Elisha prophesies. Yet, he does not hesitate to smother his ailing lord and take his throne. Perhaps this is all symbolic of the coming destruction of Baal's (Hadad's) temples, worshippers and priests. Elisha's words that "he shall surely recover" are prophetic in the fact that no matter how many times their temples are torn down and they are massacred, Baal's worshippers keep coming back.

The duration of the kingships for this period are given in a somewhat confusing manner, but it seems that Hazael reigned for nearly a hundred years. We are told that he was finally defeated in battle and his son, Ben-Haddad II took over the throne. Talk about "mighty men of old"!

Job was said to live in the Land of Uz, and it is purported by biblical scholars that Azazel was the bene elohim who was the Adversary or ha shaitan who took Job's situation before Yahweh to be tested. However, many scholars believe that Job lived in the same approximate time as Abraham, when ones wealth was measured by the size of one's flocks and herds of animals -- not in precious metals or possessions. This seems to me to be a reasonable deduction. If Hazael was a real king that precludes the possibility of Hazael and Azazel being one and the same. However, if we take all of this as literal history, we can see Hazael being a 'real life' angel of the Lord's judgement against Israel. All of this happened around 845 BCE to 744 BCE -- five to six hundred years before the Qumran settlement and about two hundred years before the Babylonian captivity of the Jews...and long after the Flood. Both Ben-Hadad and Hazael were still worshipped in Damascus as late as the first century CE. Kings of men become gods, who live long in legend. Surely, the memory of his reign of suppression and the similarity of his name to the Peacock Angel heard during the captivity in Babylon offered a tempting parallel to the authors of these texts with the idea of judgement and the concept of the "angry (and punishing) spirit."

Recall that Hazael, when he first goes to visit the prophet on behalf of his lord, calls himself Elisha's servant -- or the Lord's servant. Elisha was seen as an earthly emanation or "son" of the Lord, and the spiritual heir to one of his most important prophets. Possibly this is simply a common display of respect for the holy man. We are never told whom Hazael worships, and because he is a Syrian we are left to presume that he worships 'foreign gods'. But why does he call himself a servant of Elisha and his god?

Aside from being a seer or prophet, we are told in Kings II that Elisha performed healings, a bit of magic with an axe-head and even the resurrection of several children. However, he also sets bears upon a large group of children who make fun of his baldness and "fourty-two" of them are ripped to pieces. It is only when Elisha is dying that he gives the then reigning king the power to smite the Syrian armies and Hazael through acts of sympathetic magic. All his life, like his predecessor before him, Elisha dabbled behind the scenes in the politics of the region, making and breaking kings. He is not the first to do this, nor is he the last.