Jehoahaz and Joash: Fifty Horsemen and the Arrow of Deliverance

Jehoahaz son of Jehu reigned seventeen years, and throughout them Aram pressed Israel hard. The tally is given with unusual bookkeeping precision: the king was left no army "except fifty horsemen, ten chariots and ten thousand foot, for the king of Aram had destroyed them and made them like the dust at threshing." Jehoahaz pleaded — and deliverance was sent, though not in his days.

Joash son of Jehoahaz reigned sixteen years. He came to Elisha when the prophet was dying and wept over him in the very words with which Elisha had once seen Elijah go: "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen!"

The prophet told him to take a bow. "Open the window eastward" — and the arrow was shot: the arrow of deliverance from Aram. Then: "Strike the ground." The king struck three times and stopped. Elisha was angry: he should have struck five or six times, and then Aram would have been finished; now you will strike Aram three times.

And so it was: Joash defeated Aram three times and recovered the towns taken from his father. He also defeated Amaziah king of Judah at Beth-shemesh and broke down four hundred cubits of the wall of Jerusalem — the one occasion on which the Northern Kingdom took the southern capital.