The Arameans

The Arameans were the Semitic-speaking peoples of Syria and upper Mesopotamia, centered primarily around the city of Damascus. They appear throughout the Old Testament as Israel's closest northern neighbors - sometimes allies, more often rivals, occasionally the object of prophetic oracles. They are less famous than Assyria or Babylon in popular understanding of the biblical world, but for the northern kingdom of Israel in particular, Aram-Damascus was the most persistent and proximate military threat for nearly two centuries.

The Aramean kingdom based at Damascus rose to prominence in the 10th century BCE and was a significant regional power through the 8th century, when it was conquered by Assyria in 732 BCE. During this period the kings of Aram-Damascus - Ben-Hadad I, Ben-Hadad II, Hazael, and Ben-Hadad III - appear repeatedly in the books of Kings in conflict with the northern kingdom of Israel and, to a lesser extent, with Judah. The stories of the prophet Elisha are set largely against the background of Aramean-Israelite conflict: Elisha heals the Aramean general Naaman (2 Kings 5), warns the king of Israel about Aramean military movements (2 Kings 6), and anoints Hazael as king of Aram (2 Kings 8). The international scope of prophetic activity in these stories is striking.

Aramaic - the language of the Arameans - became one of the most significant languages in the history of the Bible. As Assyria expanded, it adopted Aramaic as the administrative language of its empire, and Aramaic subsequently became the common spoken language of the entire ancient Near East for several centuries. Portions of Daniel and Ezra are written in Aramaic. More significantly for New Testament readers, Aramaic was the everyday spoken language of Jews in Judea and Galilee in the 1st century CE. When Jesus addressed his father as "Abba," when he said "Talitha cumi" to the young girl, when he cried "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani" from the cross - he was speaking Aramaic. The language of Israel's old enemy became the language Jesus spoke.

The Aramean story also illustrates a recurring pattern in the prophetic tradition: God's concern is not limited to Israel. The healing of Naaman the Aramean general is a striking example - a foreign military commander, a traditional enemy, healed by Israel's prophet and moved to confess that there is no god in all the earth except in Israel. Jesus refers to this story explicitly in Luke 4:27, making the point that God's mercy extended beyond Israel's boundaries even in the time of Elisha. The Arameans, who spent much of their history as Israel's adversaries, appear in the biblical narrative as recipients of the same divine care that Israel claimed exclusively for itself.