Hadadezer ben Rehob

This article is about Hadadezer in the Hebrew Bible. For the 9th Century BCE king of Aram-Damascus, see Hadadezer.
Hadadezer bar Rehob
King of Zobah

Hadadezer (Biblical Hebrew: חדדעזר, romanized: Ḥăḏaḏʿezer, lit. 'Hadad helps';[1]), son of Rehob, was king of Zobah or Sova (Imperial Aramaic Ṣoḇā), a Syrian kingdom that may have been in the Beqaa Valley (now in Lebanon),[2] extended along the eastern side of the Anti-Lebanon mountains, reaching Hama to the north.[3] Zobah exercised power throughout southern Syria and inevitably clashed with the expanding empire of Israel.[1]

Biography

Hanun, king of Ammon (now Jordan), hired Hadadezer in his war against David. Joab found them in a double-battle array, with the Ammonites toward the capital of Rabbah (now Amman) and the Sovan mercenaries near Madaba. David battled the Sovans, which caused them to scatter. This alarmed the Ammonites, who fled back to their capital.[4]

After the Syrians were defeated, Hadadezer traveled north to "recover his border" (2 Samuel 8:3).[4] The power of the Ammonites and the Syrians was finally broken, and David's empire expanded to the Euphrates according to 2 Samuel 10:15–19 and 1 Chronicles 19:15–19.[5]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Eerdmans 2000, p. 537.
  2. ^ Eerdmans 2000, p. 537: According to Mark Anthony Phelps, in association with David Noel Freedman, the precise location of the city of Zobah is not known; however there is some agreement that it may have lied in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon. In later Assyrian documents it may have been named a provincial center that derived from the recently incorporated city of Damascus..
  3. ^ "The Doctrine of Aram (Syria)". kukis.org. Retrieved 9 September 2017.
  4. ^ a b Easton 1894, p. 302.
  5. ^ Easton 1894, p. 303.

References

Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Easton, Matthew George (1897). "Hadadezer". Easton's Bible Dictionary (New and revised ed.). T. Nelson and Sons.