Hezion
He'zion (Heb. Chezyon', חֶזיוֹן, visionz; Sept. Α᾿ζιών), the father of Tabrimon and grandfather of the Ben-hadad I, king of Damascene-Syria, to whom Asa sent a largess to conciliate his aid against Baasha (1Ki 15:18). B.C. ante 928. A question has long been raised whether this name (which only occurs in the above passage) indicates the same person as the REZON of 1Ki 11:23. Thenius, after Ewald, suggests that the successful adventurer who became king of Damascus, and was so hostile a neighbor to Solomon throughout his reign, was really called Hezion, and that the designation Rezon (רזוֹן, "prince") was either assumed by him, or bestowed on him by his followers after he was seated on his new throne. There is, of course, no chronological difficulty in this supposition. Less than forty years intervened between the death of Solomon, when Rezon was reigning at Damascus (1Ki 11:25), and the treaty between Asa and Ben-hadad I (1Ki 15:18-19), during which interval there is no violence to probability in assuming the occurrence of the death of Rezon or Hezion, the accession and entire reign of Tabrimon his son, who was unquestionably king of Syria and contemporary with Asa's father (1Ki 15:19), and the succession of Tabrimon's son, Beni-hldad I. This identity of Hezion with Rezon is an idea apparently as old as the Sept. translators; for they associated in their version with Solomon's adversary the Edomite Hadad [or, as they called him, Ader, τὸν ῎Αδερ], "Es-rom, the son of Eliadah" (see the Sept. of 1Ki 11:14); a name which closely resembles our Hezion, though it refers to Rezon, as the patronymic proves (1Ki 11:23). The later versions, Peshito (Hedron) and Arabic (Hedron), seem to approximate also more nearly to Hezion than to Rezon. Of the old commentators, Junius, Piscator, Malvenda, and Menochius have been cited (see Poli Synops. ad loc.) as maintaining the identity. Kohler also, and Marsham (Can. Chronicles p. 346), and Dathe have been referred to by Keil as in favor of the same view. Keil himself is uncertain. According to another opinion, Hezion was not identical with Rezon, but his successor; this is propounded by Winer (B. R. W. 1, 245, and 2, 322). If the account be correct which is communicated by Josephus (Ant. 7, 5, 2) from the fourth book of Nicolaus Damascenus to the effect that the name of the king of Damascus who was contemporary with David was Hadad (῎Αδαδος), we have in it probably the dynastic name which Rezon or Hezion adopted for himself and his heirs, who, according to the same statement, occupied the throne of Syria for ten generations. According to Macrobius (Saturnalia, 1, 23), Adad was the name of the supreme god of the Syrians; and as it was a constant practice with the kings of Syria and Babylon to assume names which connected them with their gods (comp. Tabrimon of 1Ki 15:18, the son of our Hezion, whose name= רַמּוֹן+טָב, "good is Rimmon," another Syrian deity, probably the same with Adad; see 2Ki 5:18, and Zec 12:11), we may not unreasonably conjecture that Hezion, who in his political relation called himself Rezon, or "prince," adopted the name Hadad [or, rather. Ben-hadad, "Son of the supreme God"] in relation to the religion of his country and to his own ecclesiastical supremacy. It is remarkable that even after the change of dynasty in Hazael this title of Ben- hadad seemed to survive (see 2Ki 13:3). If this conjecture be true, the energetic marauder who passes under the names of Rezon and Hezion
in the passages which we quoted at the commencement of this article was strong enough not only to harass the great Solomon, but to found a dynasty of kings which occupied the throne of Syria to the tenth descent, even down to the revolution effected by Hazael, "near two hundred years, according to the exactest chronology of Josephus" (Whiston's note on Ant. 7 5, 2). SEE REZON.
