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ORONTES*
River of the Great Rift Valley, flowing northward from the watershed and reaching the Mediterranean at Seleucia Pieria, the harbor city for Antioch. The Orontes never provided Syria with an economy as did the Nile for Egypt or the Tigris-Euphrates for Mesopotamia.
The countries that form the Fertile Crescent include Syria, which powerfully affected Israel’s history, principally through the cities that stood on the Orontes; for example, the city of “Hamath the great” (Am 6:2) on the Orontes against which Solomon fought (2 Chr 8:3-4) and which Jeroboam II much later recovered for Israel (2 Kgs 14:28). When Samaria fell to Assyria, Sargon deported its inhabitants and replaced them with people from Hamath (17:24, 30). The inscriptions of Shalmaneser III say that Ahab of Samaria fought in the battle of Qarqar on the Orontes in 854 BC. Jehoahaz of Judah was summoned by Pharaoh Neco to Riblah on the Orontes (23:33), an event that Jeremiah mourned in a dirge (Jer 22:10). At Riblah, Nebuchadnezzar had Zedekiah blinded and led in chains to Babylon (2 Kgs 25:20).