1 Chronicles 5:26

Stirred up (or woke) the spirit. — So 2 Chronicles 21:16, and Ezra 1:1; Ezra 1:5. For the thought, Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1.

Pul king of Assyria, and... Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria. — No trace of Pûl as distinct from Tiglath-pileser has been found in the Assyrian monuments, which, it must be remembered, are contemporary. In 2 Kings 15:19 we read that, “Pul king of Assyria came against the land,” in the reign of Menahem, who recognised the Assyrian monarch as his suzerain, and paid a tribute of 1,000 talents of silver. Now Tiglath-pileser II. actually claims to have received tribute of Menahem (Menahimmu). Pûl appears to have been the original name of Tiglath-pileser, which, upon his accession to the throne of Assyria (745 B.C.), he discarded for that of the great king who had ruled the country four centuries before his time. The name Pûl has been identified by Dr. Schrader with the Porus of Ptolemy’s Canon, Pôr being the Persian pronunciation of Pûl. The Syriac here omits “Pûl king of Assyria.” The LXX. (Vat.) has Χαλαχ, and the Arabic Bãlaq. Perhaps the chronicler meant to indicate the identity of Pûl and Tiglath: “The spirit of Pul and (= that is) the spirit of Tiglath, and he carried them away.”

And he carried them away. — Tiglath-pileser is meant. (See 2 Kings 15:29 : “In the days of Pekah king of Israel, came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah... and Gilead, and Galilee... and carried them captive to Assyria.”) From the Assyrian records we learn that (circ. 734–732 B.C.) Tiglath-pileser received the homage of Ahaz (Yahu-haçi, Jeho-ahaz), king of Judah, slew Rezin (Raçunni) of Damascus, and reduced Pekah (Paqahú), king of Samaria, to vassalage. This supplements the Biblical account. Gilead, in 2 Kings 15:29, represents the trans-Jordanic tribes. (See 1 Chronicles 5:10; 1 Chronicles 5:16 above.) The transportation of entire populations was a common practice with the Assyrian kings. Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus) removed the men of Karbit from the mountains east of Assyria, and settled them in Egypt.

Brought them unto Halah, and Habor... — The same localities are mentioned (2 Kings 17:6) as those to which Shalmaneser IV., or rather his successor Sargon, transported the other tribes of the northern kingdom (circ. 721 B.C.). There is nothing unlikely in the statement of either text. Sargon might have thought fit to strengthen the Israelite settlements in Northern Assyria by sending thither the new bodies of compulsory colonists. It is arbitrary to suppose that two different events have been confounded by the sacred annalists.

Halah. — See Note on 2 Kings 17:6.

Habor. — Probably a district of North Assyria, not far from Halah, named after the river Habûr which rises near the upper Zab and falls into the Tigris.

Hara. — Kings, l.c., “cities of Media.” Hara here is perhaps an Aramaic name for the Median high lands, but more probably the reading is a relic of “the mountains of Media” [hârê Mâdai); comp.the LXX. at 2 Kings 17:6. The Syriac here has “cities of Media;” the LXX. omits the word.

The river Gozan. — Rather, the river of Gozan. Shalmaneser mentions the country Guzana in Mesopotamia, the Greek Gauzanitis. An Assyrian list connects it with Naçibina (Nisibis). The “river of Gozan” is the Habur.