It will be remembered that in connection with the siege of Samaria, as the story is given in II Kings, the seventh chapter, there is a peculiar but important reference to the Hittites and their known power. The people of Israel who were commanded by Jehoram were distressed by the siege of their capital when Benhadad of Damascus had pressed them to the limit of their resistance. Famine and disease had swept Samaria, so that the remnant faced the choice of surrendering or perishing. Elisha had prophesied a deliverance, and in verses six and seven in the seventh chapter of II Kings, the fulfillment of God’s promise is given in this way: “For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. “Wherefore, they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life.” Professor Newman found a great deal of grounds for hilarity in what he called this “childish narrative.” He says, “The unhistorical tone is too manifest to allow of our easy belief in it.” He admits that there may have been some unusual deliverance of Samaria, because of collateral records of dangerous night panics among various hordes of antiquity. He adds, however, in reference to the Bible account, “The particular ground of alarm attributed to them does not exhibit the writer’s acquaintance with the times in a very favorable light. No Hittite kings can have compared in power with the king of Judah, the real and near ally, who is not named at all. Nor is there a single mark of acquaintance with the facts of contemporaneous history.” Two sources of information, however, have since been derived that flatly refute the learned Professor and vindicate the accuracy of the record of God’s Word. The Assyrian sources show conclusively, upon the examination of their records, that the Hittites at that time were the greatest power with which the monarchs of Chaldea had to deal. In the records of Assur-Nasir-pal a long and powerful tribute is paid to the military might of the Hittites. So in that day they were still a strong and warlike people. They were especially dreaded by the armies of antiquity because of the unique distinction of their chariots. It is to this fact that the writer of II Kings refers when he speaks of “the noise of chariots.” The walls of Karnak give us a clear and illuminating description of these ancient weapons of battle. Each chariot was drawn by two horses, armored and shod with spikes. Three warriors rode in each chariot. One of these handled the reins, while the other two plied arrow, javelin, sword, and dart, working untold havoc in the closely packed ranks of ancient infantry. (See Plate 20.) Plate 22