Many years afterwards, a still more dreadful weapon, the iron chariot, was used against the Israelites by Jabin. This new instrument of war seems to have cowed the people completely; for we find that by means of his nine hundred chariots of iron Jabin "mightily oppressed the children of Israel" for twenty years. It has been well suggested that the possession of the war chariot gave rise to the saying of Benhadad's councillors, that the gods of Israel were gods of the hills, and so their army had been defeated; but that if the battle were fought in the plain, where the chariots and Horses could act, they would be victorious. So dreaded were these weapons, even by those who were familiar with them and were accustomed to use them, that when the Syrians had besieged Samaria, and had nearly reduced it by starvation, the fancied sound of a host of chariots and Horses that they heard in the night caused them all to flee and evacuate the camp, leaving their booty and all their property in the hands of the Israelites. Whether the Jews ever employed the terrible scythe chariots is not quite certain, though it is probable that they may have done so; and this conjecture is strengthened by the fact that they were employed against the Jews by Antiochus, who had "footmen an hundred and ten thousand, and horsemen five thousand and three hundred, and elephants two and twenty, and three hundred chariots armed with hooks" (2 Macc. xiii. 2). Some commentators think that by the iron chariots mentioned above were signified ordinary chariots armed with iron scythes projecting from the sides. [Illustration: ELIJAH IS CARRIED UP.] By degrees the chariot came to be one of the recognised forces in war, and we find it mentioned throughout the books of the Scriptures, not only in its literal sense, but as a metaphor which every one could understand. In the Psalms, for example, are several allusions to the war-chariot." He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire" (Ps. xlvi. 9). Again: "At Thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and horse are cast into a dead sleep" (Ps. lxxvi. 6). And: "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God" (Ps. xx. 7). Now, the force of these passages cannot be properly appreciated unless we realize to ourselves the dread in which the war-chariot was held by the foot-soldiers. Even cavalry were much feared; but the chariots were objects of almost superstitious fear, and the rushing sound of their wheels, the noise of the Horses' hoofs, and the shaking of the ground as the "prancing horses and jumping chariots" (Nah. iii. 2) thundered along, are repeatedly mentioned.