Omri

“ Omri belonged to the city of Jezreel, in the inheritance of Issachar; but he built Samaria in the midst of Ephraim, between the two hills of blessing and of cursing, and this town becoming the capital, gave its name to the whole kingdom. In 918, Omri left his crown to his son Ahab, who allied himself with the rich Phoenicians, and took the Zidonian princess Jezebel for his wife; the most unfortunate marriage in the whole Israelitish history. Sinful as had been the calf-worship, it was still meant for adoration of the true God ”

“ Thou art a vile wretch if thou hast power as a prophet, and will not use it for me, when thou seest how heavy I am of body, and how my great weight tortures me, with infernal racking and rending of every joint."
But Omri, rebuking his fellow, said:
"Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? We suffer justly for our crimes, and to-day do receive the due reward of our transgressions; but this young man hath done nothing amiss, save to preach against the wickedness of the priests, and for being holier than they. ”

“ Zimri despaired of maintaining himself in the royal castle, and burnt himself in it. Yet Omri was not master of Israel. Half of the people joined Tibni, the son of Ginath. Omri gradually gained the upper hand, till Tibni's death decided the matter in his favour.
With the elevation of Omri (899-875 B.C.) a third dynasty ascended the throne of Israel, while in Judah the crown continued peacefully in the family of David. Like Baasha, Omri founded a new residence; he removed his seat from Tirzah to Mount Shomron, and here built the new city of that name (Samaria) . ”

“ No one of them was marked by signal ability, unless it were Omri, who built the city of Samaria on a high hill, and so strongly fortified it that it remained the capital until the fall of the kingdom. He also made a close alliance with Tyre, the great centre of commerce in that age, and one of the wealthiest cities of antiquity. To cement this political alliance, Omri married his son Ahab--the heir-apparent to the throne--to a daughter of the Tyrian king, afterward so infamous as a religious fanatic and persecutor, under the name of Jezebel,--one of the worst women in history. ”

“ Nevertheless Omri's gained the upper hand over the party of Tibni, and the latter died, whereupon Omri became king after four years, as we may see from a comparison of 1Ki 16:15, 1Ki 16:16 with 1Ki 16:23. The “people of Israel” (1Ki 16:21) are probably the fighting people, so that the succession to the throne was decided by the military. אהרי היה as in 2Sa 2:10. הזק, with an accusative instead of with על, in the sense of to overpower, as in Jer 20:7. ”

“ The Dynasty of Omri.—Omri (q.v.) , the founder of one of the greatest dynasties of Israel, was contemporary with the revival of Tyre under Ithobaal, and the relationship between the states is seen in the marriage of Omri’s son Ahab to Jezebel, the priest-king’s daughter. His most notable recorded achievement was the subjugation of Moab and the seizure of part of its territory. The discovery of the inscription of a later king of Moab (q.v.) has proved that the east-Jordanic tribes were no uncivilized or barbaric folk ”

“ Nothing is said of the wars of Omri against Judah. To Benhadad of Damascus he seems to have lost some towns in the land of Gilead. [437] That he ruled with address, vigour, and a strong hand is clear from the inscription on a monument which Mesha, king of Moab, caused to be erected in his city of Dibon (east of the Dead Sea) . This tells us [Pg 239] that Omri and his son after him held Moab in subjection for 40 years; that not only was the city of Nebo garrisoned by the Israelites, but Omri even took Medabah, i. e. ”

“ And all Israel made Omri, the commander of the army, king over Israel that day in the camp. 17 And Omri went up from Gibbethon, and all Israel with him, and they besieged Tirzah. 18 And then when Zimri saw that the city was seized, he went into the citadel of the king's house, and burnt the king's house over himself with fire, and he died 19 for his sins which he committed, doing evil in the eyes of Yahweh, walking in the path of Jeroboam, and in his sin which he did, making Israel sin. ”

“ Omri surrounded his city with substantial ramparts; he built a palace for himself, and a temple in which was enthroned a golden calf similar to those at Dan and Bethel.* A population drawn from other nations besides the Israelites flocked into this well-defended stronghold, and Samaria soon came to be for Israel what Jerusalem already was for Judah, an almost impregnable fortress, in which the sovereign entrenched himself, and round which the nation could rally in times of danger. ”

“ Thus we find in Scripture the same person called “the son of Nimshi,” and “the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi.” [248] An identification connected with this word Khumri or Omri is one of the most interesting instances of corroborative evidence that can be adduced of the accuracy of the interpretations of the cuneiform character. It was observed that the name of a city resembling Samaria was connected, and that in inscriptions containing very different texts, with one reading Beth Khumri or Omri. ”

“ Mesha says in substance that Omri conquered Medeba and occupied it during his reign, half the reign of his son, a period of forty years, but Chemosh restored it to Moab in his (Mesha’s) day. It is said in 2 Kings 3:5, on the other hand, that “when Ahab was dead, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.” According to 1 Kings 16:23-29, Omri reigned twelve years and Ahab twenty-two years. All the reign of Omri, and half of that of Ahab would, accordingly, be but twenty-three years. ”

“ The new city gave its name to the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and the land was thence called the land of Samaria.
Omri, the first king of Samaria, was neither a strong nor a warlike leader, but he was a wise man. The crown which he had acquired, rather by the favour of circumstances than his own force of will, did not satisfy him. He wished to make his court and his people great, respected and wealthy, and he hoped that the prosperity of the days of Solomon might be restored to Israel. It is true that the nation was divided, and thereby weakened. ”

“ Omri's innovations were of far greater import than those of Jeroboam; or, to speak in the language of the Bible, he acted yet more sinfully than his predecessors. He desired to rob the nation of its God and of its origin; he desired it to forget that it had a special nationality in contradistinction to that of the idolaters. History196 has not recorded how these changes were received. His son Ahab (922–901) was destined to continue the work,—his father's bequest, as it were. In furtherance of the latter's projects he naturally kept up the close connection with Tyre and with the king of Judah. ”

“ Omri also cherished to a great, perhaps even to a too great degree, the hope of a friendly alliance with Phœnicia. He desired that a part of the riches which their extensive maritime expeditions and trade introduced into that country, might also flow into his own kingdom. At this time various kings had waded to the throne in Tyre through the blood of their predecessors, until at length Ethbaal (Ithobal) , a priest of Astarte, ascended the throne, after the murder of his predecessor, Phalles. The disastrous occurrences in Phœnicia had greatly weakened the land. ”

“ OMRI, in the Bible, the first great king of Israel after the separation of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, who flourished in the early part of the 9th century B.C. The dynasty of Jeroboam had been exterminated by Baasha (see Asa) at a revolt when the army was besieging the Philistines at Gibbethon, an unidentified Danite site. A quarter of a century later, Baasha's son Elah, after a reign of two years, was slain by Zimri, captain of the chariots, in a drinking bout, and again the royal family were put to the sword. ”

“ And the people were encamped against Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines.
16:16 And the people that were encamped heard say, Zimri hath conspired, and hath also slain the king: wherefore all Israel made Omri, the captain of the host, king over Israel that day in the camp. ”

“ Verse 16
The statutes of Omri are kept - Omri, king of Israel, the father of Ahab, was one of the worst kings the Israelites ever had; and Ahab followed in his wicked father's steps. The statutes of those kings were the very grossest idolatry. Jezebel, wife of the latter, and daughter of Ithobaal, king of Tyre, had no fellow on earth. From her Shakespeare seems to have drawn the character of Lady Macbeth; a woman, like her prototype, mixed up of tigress and fiend, without addition. Omri Ahab, and Jezebel, were the models followed by the Israelites in the days of this prophet. ”

“ Omri was reigning in Samaria, and must have come into close relations with the Assyrians, for during more than a century and a half after his death they still called the land of Israel by his name. [94] In 854 Salmanassar II. defeated at Karkar the combined forces of Ahab and Benhadad. In 850, 849 and 846 he conducted campaigns against Damascus. In 842 he received tribute from Jehu, [95] and in 839 again fought Damascus under Hazael. After this there passed a whole generation during which Assyria came no farther south than Arpad, some sixty miles north of Damascus ”

“ Those that make corrupt laws, and bring in corrupt usages, are doing that which perhaps may prove the ruin of the child unborn. (2.) It was not the less evil in itself, provoking to God, and dangerous to the sinners, for its having been established and confirmed by the laws of princes, the examples of great men, and a long prescription. Though the worship of idols is enacted by the statutes of Omri, recommended by the practice of the house of Ahab, and pleads that it has been the usage of many generations, yet it is still displeasing to God and destructive to Israel ”

“ It superseded as completely as Jerusalem had done the old local shrines endeared by the immemorial sanctity of their traditions; but as its origin was purely political it acted unfavourably on the religion of the people. It became a city of idolatry and of luxurious wealth; a city in which Baal-worship with its ritual pomp threw into the [Pg 343] shade the worship of Jehovah; a city in which corrupted nobles, lolling at wine feasts on rich divans in their palaces inlaid with ivory, sold the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes. Of Omri we are told no more. ”

“ Omar, with his native vehemence, was about to speak, when Abu Bekr bade him to be silent, and anticipated him, as Omar used in after days to say, with the same arguments he himself had thought of, and even better. ‘Every word,’ said Abu Bekr, calmly and firmly, ‘which the Citizens had uttered in their own praise was true, but in noble birth and influence the Coreish were paramount, and to none but them would Arabia yield obedience.’ ‘Then,’ cried the men of Medîna, ‘let there be one chief from amongst you and one from amongst us.’ ‘Away with you!’ exclaimed Omar; ‘two cannot stand together’ ”

“ So died Omar, next to the Prophet the greatest in the of Islam; for it was all within these ten years that, by his wisdom, patience, and vigour, the dominion was achieved over Syria, Egypt, and Persia, which Islam has ever since maintained. Abu Bekr beat down the apostate tribes; but at his death the armies of Islam had but just crossed the Syrian frontier. Omar began his reign the master only of Arabia. He died the Caliph of an empire embracing Persia, Egypt, and some of the fairest provinces of the Byzantine throne. ”

“ Omar used to say that there was no man for whom the people would more readily have laid down their life. They gave him the sobriquet of ‘the Sighing,’ because of his tender-heartedness. Excepting the solitary case in which he committed a traitor-brigand to the flames, no single act of cruelty stands against him; and for that he expressed his sorrow. It was one of the three things, he used to say, which he would wish undone. The others were, that he had pardoned Asháth, who deserved death; and that when he transferred Khâlid to Syria, he had not at the same time sent Omar to Irâc. ”

“ If they refuse, expel them from the city. I am the Roaring Lion of the desert, and will devour them up.’ ‘The Lord destroy thee!’ cried Omar; and Hobâb returned the words. The altercation gaining in heat and bitterness, Abu Bekr saw that it must be stopped at any risk; so stepping forward he said: ‘Ye see these two’—and he pointed to Omar and Abu Obeida—‘Choose ye now whichever of them ye will, and salute him as your Chief.’ ‘Nay,’ cried both at once, ‘Thou hast already, at the Prophet’s bidding, led the prayers; thou art our Chief. ”

“ Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, elderly when his sons had been born, had aged with startling suddenness since the death of Omar. He had all at once become an old man, unable to rally from the shock of his bereavement, bewailing the fate of his elder and favourite son, and trembling for the future of his beloved tribe left to the tender mercies of a man he now recognised to be more Frenchman than Arab. He exaggerated every Francophile tendency he saw in Saïd and cursed the French as heartily as ever Omar had done, forgetting that he himself was largely responsible for the inclinations he objected to. ”

“ To fill a vacancy requiring unusual skill, experience, and power 'Omar unwisely appointed 'Ammar, who, as a persecuted slave and confessor in the first days of Islam, was second to none in the faith; but a man of no ability, and now advanced in years.1 The citizens of Al-Kufa were not long in finding out his incapacity; and, at their desire, 'Omar transferred Abu Musa from Al-Basra to rule over them. But it was no easy work for him to curb the factious populace. ”