Meanwhile Ahaziah, during his short and troubled reign over Israel, began to feel the effects of the late disastrous campaign against Ramoth-Gilead. The Syrians, now masters of the country East of the Jordan, cut off all communication between his realm and his vassal the king of Moab. The latter, therefore, rebelled against Israel, and refused to send his yearly tribute of 100,000 lambs, and 100,000 rams (2 K. iii. 4). Before he could take measures for punishing this revolt, Ahaziah fell through a lattice in his palace at Samaria, and sustained much injury. A devotee to the Phœnician idolatries of his mother, he sent messengers to the Philistine city of Ekron to enquire of the oracle of Baal-Zebub (_the lord of flies_), whether he should recover. On their road thither the messengers encountered Elijah, who, after reproaching them for consulting a heathen deity instead of Jehovah, announced that their master would never leave his bed alive. Returning, they informed Ahaziah of this occurrence, who enquired what kind of man they had met. Their answer was decisive. In the hairy man, girt with a girdle of leather about his loins, the king recognised all too clearly his father’s enemy, and, ill as he was, this only served to kindle his wrath. Dispatching a captain with 50 men to the recesses of Carmel, where the prophet seems to have taken up his abode, he demanded his instant surrender. The soldier went and found Elijah seated on the mountain. _Man of God_, said he, _the king hath said, Come down. If I be a man of God_, replied the other, _let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty men_. With the word the fire descended, and consumed the captain and his fifty. A similar force was then a second time dispatched by the king, and they too met the same fate[379]. A third captain, in an altered tone, implored the prophet to come down, and Elijah, assured by God of safety, descended and followed him into the presence of the king, and announced in person his approaching end; shortly after which Ahaziah died, and was succeeded by his brother JEHORAM (2 K. i. 2–17). This was the last time Elijah confronted any of the family of Ahab. Once only is he recorded to have expostulated with any of the house of Judah. Hearing that the son of Jehoshaphat, who seems to have been entrusted with a portion of the regal power during his father’s lifetime, was not walking in his father’s ways, but in those of Ahab and the kings of Israel, he sent a letter to him, denounced his idolatries, and threatened him with sore judgments (2 Chr. xxi. 12–15).