=Rule of the House of Jehu.= The history of Northern Israel for the next two generations is a record of humiliation and disaster. Jehu secured his position on the throne by paying a heavy tribute to the king of Assyria, whose armies were hovering on his northern borders. The active and ruthless Aramean king, Hazael, overran Northern Israel, destroying most of its warriors and extracting heavy tribute. In this hour of Israel's weakness the Philistines made forays into the south, carrying off Hebrews as slaves to foreign markets. It was not until Jehoash, the grandson of Jehu, came to the throne of Israel that the tide turned. Damascus, attacked in the rear by a northern Aramean people, was unable to cope with the Israelite armies. The east-Jordan territory was reconquered by Jehoash's son, Jeroboam II, and the Moabites again laid under tribute. For the first time in Israel's history a prophet arose in the land of Galilee. In the small town of Gath-Hepher, situated on a hill a little west of the highway which runs north from Nazareth, lived Jonah, the son of Amittai. He predicted that Jereboam's kingdom would extend, as it did later, from the southern end of the Dead Sea to the gateway between the Lebanons in the north, that marked the southern boundary of the strong northern Aramean kingdom of which the capital was Hamath. Again Northern Israel touched its widest bounds. Pride and self-confidence took possession of the nation. The military nobles who rallied about the king, enriched by the spoils of war, enslaved their fellow-countrymen whose fortunes had been depleted by the disastrous Aramean wars. Outwardly Northern Israel seemed strong and prosperous, but within were social wrongs which were eating the very vitals of the nation. =The Advance of Assyria.= It was at this time that Assyria became the dominating factor in Northern Israel's history. This enterprising and ambitious nation was apparently an offshoot of the old Babylonian empire. It occupied the fertile plains east of the upper Tigris. As early as the eighteenth century B.C. it began to break away from the authority of Babylon. About 1100 B.C. Tiglath-pileser I laid the foundations of the Assyrian empire by campaigns in Babylonia, Elam, Mesopotamia, and Syria; but it was not until 854 B.C. that Assyria touched Israel. Then, according to the annals of the Assyrian king, Shalmanezer II defeated Ahab, together with the other princes of Syria, at the battle of Karkar. By 842 he had conquered practically all of Syria and received tribute from Jehu of Israel. During the reigns of the next two Assyrian kings the advance of this great world power was stayed. But when Tiglath-pileser IV founded a new dynasty he injected fresh energy into the empire, recovered its lost territory, and advanced to the conquest of Palestine.