Note 243 — Chapter III · THE EXODUS OUT OF EGYPT (continued 2)

Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100) boasts of having sailed upon the Mediterranean in a ship of Arvad, and of there killing a dolphin, while his son, Assur-bil-kala, erected statues in the cities of ‘the land of the Amorites’ (W. A. I. i. 6, No. vi.). A little later Assur-irbi carved an image of himself on Mount Amanus, near the Gulf of Antioch, but the capture by the king of Aram of Mutkina, which guarded the ford over the Euphrates, subsequently cut him off from the west. Palestine is already called Ebir-nâri, ‘the land beyond the river,’ in an Assyrian inscription which Professor Hommel would refer to the age of Assur-bil-kala, the son of Tiglath-pileser I. (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 196). Professor D. H. Müller (Die Propheten, p. 215) conjecturally emends the Hebrew text of Numb. xxiii. 23, 24, and sees in it a reference to the kingdom of Samalla, to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch. The two verses become in his translation, ‘[And he saw Samalla], and began his speech, and said, Alas, who will survive of Samalla? And ships [shall come] from the coast of Chittim, and Asshur shall oppress him, and Eber shall oppress him, and he himself is destined to destruction.’ Samalla, however, was only the Assyrian name of a district called by natives of Northern Syria Ya’di and Gurgum; nor is it easy to understand how Balaam could have ‘seen’ the north of Syria from Moab. Professor Hommel is more probably right in his view that Asshur here does not signify the Assyrians, but the Asshurim to the south of Palestine (Gen. xxv. 3, 18).