Hadad, the king of Edom, who had failed to gain fame and honor in the
Egyptian campaign, was favored by fortune in another war, a war against
Moab. The Moabites shrank from meeting Hadad alone, and they made an
alliance with the Midianites. In the thick of the fight the Moabites
fled from the field of battle, leaving the Midianites to their fate,
and these deserted allies of theirs were cut down to a man by Hadad and
his Edomites. The Moabites saved their skins, and suffered only the
inconvenience of having to pay tribute. To avenge the faithlessness
practiced against them, the Midianites, supported by their kinsmen, the
sons of Keturah, gathered a mighty army, and attacked the Moabites the
following year. But Hadad came to their assistance, and again he
inflicted a severe defeat upon the Midianites, who had to give up their
plan of revenge against Moab. This is the beginning of the inveterate
enmity between the Moabites and the Midianites. If a single Moabite is
caught in the land of Midian, he is killed without mercy, and a
Midianite in Moab fares no better.
After the death of Hadad, the Edomites installed Samlah of Masrekah as
their king, and he reigned eighteen years. It was his desire to take up
the cause of Agnias, the old ally of the Edomites, and chastise Zepho
for having gone to war with him, but his people, the Edomites, would
not permit him to undertake aught that was inimical to their kinsman,
and Samlah had to abandon the plan. In the fourteenth year of Samlah's
reign, Zepho died, having been king of Kittim for fifty years. His
successor was Janus, one of the people of Kittim, who enjoyed an
equally long reign.
Balaam had made his escape to Egypt after the death of Zepho, and he
was received there with great demonstrations of honor by the king and
all the nobles, and Pharaoh appointed him to be royal counsellor, for
he had heard much about his exceeding great wisdom.
In the Edomite kingdom, Samlah was succeeded by Saul of Pethor, a youth
of surpassing beauty, whose reign lasted forty years. His successor
upon the throne was Baal Hamon, king for thirty-eight years, during
which period the Moabites rose up against the Edomites, to whom they
had been paying tribute since the time of Hadad, and they succeeded in
throwing off the yoke of the stranger.
The times were troubled everywhere. Agnias, the king of Africa, died,
and also the death of Janus occurred, the king of Kittim. The
successors to these two rulers, Asdrubal, the son of Agnias, and
Latinus, the king of Kittim, then entered upon a long drawn out war of
many years. At first the fortune of war favored Latinus. He sailed to
Africa in ships, and inflicted one defeat after another upon Asdrubal,
and finally this king of Africa lost his life upon the battlefield.
After destroying the canal from Kittim to Africa built many years
before by Agnias, Latinus returned to his own country, taking with him
as his wife Ushpiziwnah, the daughter of Asdrubal, who was so
wondrously beautiful that her countrymen wore her likeness upon their
garments.
Latinus did not enjoy the fruits of his victory long. Anibal, the
younger brother of Asdrubal and his successor in the royal power, went
to Kittim in ships and carried on a series of wars lasting eighteen
years, in the course of which he killed off eighty thousand of the
people of Kittim, not sparing the princes and the nobles. At the end of
this protracted period he went back to Africa, and reigned over his
people in quiet and peace.
The Edomites, during the forty-eight years of the reign of Hadad, the
successor of Baal Hamon, fared no better than the people of Kittim.
Hadad's first undertaking was to reduce the Moabites again under the
sovereignty of Edom, but he had to desist, because he could not offer
successful resistance to a newly chosen king of theirs, one of their
own people, who enlisted the aid of their kinsmen the Ammonites. The
allies commanded a great host, and Hadad was overwhelmed. These wars
were followed by others between Hadad of Edom. and Abimenos of Kittim.
The latter was the attacking party, and he invaded Seir with a mighty
army. The sons of Seir were defeated abjectly, their king Hadad was
taken captive, and then executed by Abimenos, and Seir was made a
province subject to Kittim and ruled by a governor.
Thus ended the independence of the sons of Esau. Henceforth they had to
pay tribute to Kittim, over which Abimenos ruled until his death, in
the thirty-eighth year of his reign.[426]