Admitting the correctness of the general opinions of Assyriologists concerning _Aḫabbu mât Sir’ilâa_, it must have been between this period and his death that he joined the Syrian league against Shalmaneser II. of Assyria, with a force only half that of Ben-Hadad, though his chariots were nearly twice as many. Notwithstanding this, however, the Israelitish troops were sufficiently numerous, and the defeat of such a large army as that of the allies of the Syrian league, and the slaughter of a total of 14,000 men among them (another account says 20,500), many of them in all probability Israelites, finds no place, strange to say, in the sacred record, notwithstanding that the Hebrew writers do not, as a rule, in the least object to mentioning national defeat, and in this case it would have been a most important thing to refer to, the danger which threatened them and their allies being such as promised to overthrow their national existence altogether. Perhaps the compiler of the sacred record, however, did not realize to the full what the Assyrian invasion meant; or he may not have desired to justify Ahab’s policy (which, in view of the danger which threatened, was a sound one), and so discredit with the people the fanatical behaviour and tragic warning of the prophet who reproached the king so mercilessly because he had made friends with Ben-Hadad instead of pressing on against him in hostility, even to the death. The Rev. Joseph Horner (_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1898, p. 244), besides bringing in the chronological difficulty, which is very real, in spite of Prof. Oppert’s _Noli me tangere_ (P.S.B.A., 1898, pp. 24-47), notes (pp. 237, 238) the difficulty of the name. This is the only place where Israel is called in the Assyrian inscriptions Sir´ilâa—in all other passages it is _bît Ḫumrî_, “the house of Omri,” or _mât bît Ḫumrî_, “the land of the house of Omri,” and he regards it as incredible that a name never used before, and never afterwards found, should be employed. Elsewhere, when speaking of Jehu, Shalmaneser calls him “son” or “descendant of Omri,” apparently intending thereby to indicate his nationality, for, as is well known, the relationship expressed is not correct.