ELAM

The country of Elam lay on the east of the Lower Tigris and Euphrates, with Media on the north, and the head of the Persian Gulf and Persia on the south. Its chief city, and one of the greatest of ancient times, was Susa, the Shushan of Scripture, and from it there was given to the country the artificial name of Susiana by which it is called almost altogether by others than the Bible writers. From Elam came the first great conqueror, and to Elam by him belongs the honor, if it be such, of having made the first successful attempt at Empire. For, more than nineteen hundred years before Christ, Chedor-laomer king of Elam, who “extended his dominion over Babylonia and the adjoining regions, marched an army a distance of 1,200 miles from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the Dead Sea, and held Palestine and Syria in subjection for twelve years, thus effecting conquests which were not again made from the same quarter till the time of Nebuchadnezzar, ... has a good claim to be regarded as one of the most remarkable personages in the world’s history.... At a time when the kings of Egypt had never ventured beyond their borders unless it were for a foray in Ethiopia, and when in Asia no monarch had held dominion over more than a few petty tribes, and a few hundred miles of territory, he conceived the magnificent notion of binding into one the manifold nations inhabiting the vast tract which lies between the Zagros mountain-range and the Mediterranean. Lord by inheritance (as we may presume) of Elam and Chaldea or Babylonia, he was not content with these ample tracts, but, coveting more, proceeded boldly on a career of conquest up the Euphrates Valley and through Syria, into Palestine. Successful here, he governed for twelve years, dominions extending near a thousand miles from cast to west, and from north to south probably not much short of five hundred.”-Rawlinson, First Mon., chap. viii, par. 39.POTE 288.3

When Samaria was taken, the ten tribes carried captive, and their land left desolate by Sargon king of Assyria, 721 b. c., the land was repeopled from other countries which had been subdued by the kings of Assyria. By Sargon there were people brought from Babylon and Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath and from Sepharvaim, and placed in the cities of Samaria. 2 Kings 17:24. Afterward there were others brought up by Esar-haddon, grandson of Sargon, and among these were some Elamites. Ezra 4:2, 9, 10. When the Assyrian Empire had been destroyed, and the Babylonian arose, Elam was one of its provinces, and it was while there at the capital on business for the king of Babylon that Daniel had his great vision of the eighth chapter. Daniel 8:1, 2, 27. When, shortly afterward, the Medo-Persian Empire was established upon the ruin of the Babylonian, Elam bore no small part in the great work; for long before, to another prophet, God had shown the fall of Babylon, and had called, “Go up, O Elam; besiege, O Media.” Isaiah 21:2-10.POTE 289.1

It was no small part, indeed, that Elam bore in this great event, for the Persians were children of Elam, and it was the Medes and Persians who destroyed Babylon (Daniel 5:28); it was “Cyrus the Persian” who led the forces before whom the Lord opened the two-leaved gates and brake in sunder the bars of iron, and whose name the Lord called more than a hundred years before he was born (Daniel 6:28); Isaiah 45:1-4); and Cyrus king of Persia was of Elamite origin and the recognized chief of the Susianians. After the death of “Darius the Mede,” Cyrus and his Persian successors ruled the Empire till its destruction by Alexander the Great. Such, in the world, and in history, is the place of Elam, the son of Shem.POTE 290.1

Madai and Elam-the Medes and Persians-peopled the whole table-land of Iran or Central Asia, from the River Tigris to the River Indus, and from the Sea of Aral to far into Hindoostan. The Bactrians, the Sogdians, the Arians of Herat, the Hyrcanians, the Chorasmians, the Sarangians, the Sagartians, the Carmanians, the Hindoos, with many other less prominent peoples, and even the later Armenians and Cappadocians, were all of Medo-Persic stock.POTE 290.2

The second named of the sons of Shem isPOTE 291.1