Isaiah 10:9

[Is] not Calno as Carchemish?.... Jarchi's note is, "as the children of Carchemish are princes and rulers, so are the children of Calno;'' as if this was giving an instance of the grandeur of his

For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings? -Vauntings of the Assyrians. Illustrated by the self-laudatory inscriptions of Assyria deciphered by Hincks. Verse 8. (Are) not my princes altogether kings?

Is not Calno as Carchemish? have not I conquered one place as well as another, the stronger as well as the weaker? Have I not from time to time added new conquests to the old? Calno seems to be the same with Calneh, , a great and strong city. Carchemish was a city upon Euphrates, of which . Is not Hamath as Arpad? Hamath was an eminent city of Syria, not far from Euphrates, called Hemath, or Hamath the great, ; of which see 17:24 . Arpad seems to have been an obscure place, not being elsewhere named. Is not that as soon conquered as this? Is not Samaria as Damascus? or, shall not Samaria be as Damascus? Shall I not take that as I have done this city? For although Damascus possibly was not yet taken by the Assyrian, yet the prophet speaks of it as actually taken, because these words are prophetically delivered, and supposed to be uttered by the king of Assyria at or about the siege of Samaria, when Damascus was taken.

Isaiah 10:9 [Is] not Calno as Carchemish? [is] not Hamath as Arpad? [is] not Samaria as Damascus?Ver. 9. Is not Calno as Carchemish?] Here in a vaunt he reckoneth up six royal cities vanquished by himself and his ancestors; and boasteth how with a wet finger, as we say, he had taken in all the country between Nineveh and Jerusalem. Of the destruction of Calno and Hamath, see Amos 6:2. Is not Hamath.] Afterwards called Antiochia. As Arpad?] Hear how this proud braggard: “ Proiecit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba! ” Is not Samaria as Damascus?] Have not I subdued them both pari fortitudine et felicitate?

(9) Is not Calno as Carchemish?—The six names obviously pointed to more recent conquests in which Sargon and his predecessors had exulted. One after another they had fallen. Could Judah hope to escape? (1) Calno, the Calneh of Gen 10:10, Amos 6:2. That prophet had held up its fate in vain as a warning to Samaria. It has been identified by Kay with Ctesiphon on the east bank of the Tigris, by Lenormant (Manual, i. 80) with Ur of the Chaldees and with the ruins known now as the Mugheir, by Rawlinson (Five Great Monarchies, i. 20) with Nipur. The Assyrian form, Kil-Anu, means the “house” or “temple” of Anu, an Assyrian deity). Sennacherib (Lenormant i. 398), speaks of having reconquered it after a Chaldean revolt, and sold its inhabitants as slaves. The LXX. version, which instead of naming Carchemish, gives “Calanè, where the tower was built,” seems to imply a tradition identifying that city with the Tower of Babel of Gen 11:4. (2) Carchemish. Few cities of the ancient world occupied a more prominent position than this. Its name has been explained as meaning the Tower of Chemosh, and so bears witness to the widespread cultus of the deity whom we meet with in Biblical history as the “abomination of the Moabites” (1 Kings 11:7). It has been commonly identified with the Circesium of Greek historians, but the inscriptions found by Mr. George Smith at Tarabolos (the Hierapolis of the Greeks) on the banks of the Euphrates, at its junction with the Kyabur, prove that this is the true representative of the great commercial city of the old Hittite kings (Times, Aug. 23, 1876). Its importance is shown by the frequent occurrence of the name, in its Egyptian form of Karakumusha, in the record of Egyptian kings. Thothmes I. (circa B.C. 1600) conquered it, and, as a result of his campaign, strengthened the forces of Egypt with the chariots and horses for which it was afterwards conspicuous (Lenormant, Manual, 1 p. 229). Thothmes III. built a fortress there to guard the passage of the Euphrates (ibid. 1 p. 232), the ruins of which, with Egyptian inscriptions and works of Egyptian manufacture, have recently been found there (ibid. 1 p.,263). It revolted against Ramses II. (the Sesostris of the Greeks), with the Hittites and Phœnicians, and other nations, but was subdued by him in the expedition in which the victorious issue is recorded on the monument on the Nahr-el-Kelb near Beyrût. Shalmaneser IV. (contemporary with Ahab) records that he demolished and burnt it (ibid. 1 p. 380). Tiglath-pileser II., the king to whom Ahaz paid tribute, received tribute from its king in B.C. 742 (ibid. 1 p. 389). The last two victories are probably referred to in the boast now before us. At a later period it was conspicuous for the great defeat of Pharaoh Necho’s army by Nebuchadnezzar (see notes on Jeremiah 46:2).

9. The six cities are enumerated in geographical order from north to south, the first of each pair being, however, nearer to Jerusalem than the second. (1) The site of Carchemish (Ass. Gargamîsh) was identified by Mr G. Smith with the ruins of Jerabîs on the right bank of the Euphrates. As a great centre of the Hittite confederacy it had been frequently subdued by Assyrian kings, and was ultimately incorporated in the Empire by Sargon in 717. (2) Calno is probably Kullani, a city near Arpad, captured by Tiglath-pileser III. about 738. It is probably identical with the Calneh mentioned in Amos 6:2; but quite distinct from the Babylonian Calnçh of Gen 10:10. (3) Arpad (now Tell Erfâd, about 15 miles north of Aleppo) was taken about 740 by Tiglath-pileser. (4) Hamath (Hamah, on the Orontes, about half way between Carchemish and Damascus) was taken by Tiglath-pileser in 738 and again by Sargon in 720. (5) Damascus fell about 732 and (6) Samaria in 722.

Is not Calno as Carchemish? - The meaning of this confident boasting is, that none of the cities and nations against which be had directed his arms, had been able to resist him.

9. Is not Calno as Carchemish — Rawlinson puts Calno, or Calneh, sixty miles southeast by east from Babylon. Carchemish, he thinks, is not the classical Circesium, but lay higher up the Euphrates.