Therefore a battle roar will arise among your people, And all your fortresses will be destroyed, As Shalman destroyed Beth Arbel in the day of battle. The mother was dashed in pieces with her children.
Of the several cities called Arbela, that celebrated in Grecian history, was part of the Assyrian empire. Two others, one “in the mountain-district of Pella” , and so on the East side of Jordan, the other between Sepphoris and Tiberias , (and so in Naphthali) must, together with the countries in which they lay, have fallen into the bands of the Assyrians in the reign of “Tiglath-pileser,” who “took - Gilead and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali” 2 Kings 15:29, in the reign of Pekah. The whole country, East of Jordan, being now in the hands of Shalmaneser, his natural approach to Samaria was over the Jordan, through the valley or plain of Jezreel. Here was the chief wealth of Israel, and the fittest field for the Assyrian horse. Over the Jordan then, from where Israel itself came when obedient to God, from where came the earlier instruments of God’s chastisements, came doubtless the host of Shalmaneser, along the “great plain” of Esdraelon. “In that plain” also lay an “Arbela,” “nine miles from Legion” . Legion itself was at the Western extremity of the plain, as Scythopolis or Bethshean lay at the East .