Omri, fortified by this alliance, could now venture to think of undertaking warlike expeditions. He captured several towns of Moab, which had emancipated itself under Jeroboam's rule, and compelled it to become once more tributary. He forced the Moabites to send herds of oxen and rams every year as tribute. As, however, a sort of alliance existed between Moab and Aram, and an increase of Israel's power was watched by Aram with a jealous eye, the Aramæan king of Damascus, Ben-hadad I., declared war against Omri, and recovered some of the cities he had taken. Omri was forced to accept peace with Ben-hadad on hard terms, and bound himself to open the caravan-roads through the kingdom of Israel, and to allow free passage through the land. Omri thereupon entered into a closer alliance with the kingdom of Tyre, and pursued the plan of assimilating his people to their Canaanite neighbours. Why should he endeavour to keep Israel separate from the surrounding peoples? Would it not be wiser and better to permit the kingdom of the Ten Tribes to assume a Phœnician or Tyrian character? United as they were in language and customs, might not the two races become more closely welded together, if the Phœnician form of worship were introduced into the kingdom of Israel? Omri led the way to this union. He introduced the service of Baal and Astarte as the official mode of worship; he built a temple for Baal in his capital of Samaria, ordained priests, and commanded that sacrifices should be universally made to the Phœnician idols. He desired to see the worship of the bull, as observed in Bethel and Dan, abolished. It seemed to him too distinctly Israelitish in character, and to be likely to maintain the division between the Israelites and Phœnicians. Jehovah, adored with or without a visible image, was too striking a contrast to the Tyrian Baal or Adonis for Omri to permit His worship to remain. Omri's innovations were of far greater import than those of Jeroboam; or, to speak in the language of the Bible, he acted yet more sinfully than his predecessors. He desired to rob the nation of its God and of its origin; he desired it to forget that it had a special nationality in contradistinction to that of the idolaters. History has not recorded how these changes were received. His son Ahab (922-901) was destined to continue the work,--his father's bequest, as it were. In furtherance of the latter's projects he naturally kept up the close connection with Tyre and with the king of Judah.