Hazael in Fausset's Bible Dictionary

King of Damascus from 886 to 840 B.C. Sent by his master Benhadad originally to Elisha to ask if he would recover from his sickness. The prophet answered he might recover (the disease not being fatal), but "that he should surely die." Then Elisha gazing at Hazael burst into tears (typifying Him who wept over Jerusalem, Luke 19:41), and said his weeping was "because I know the evil thou wilt do unto Israel ... their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child." Hazael replied, expressing surprise at such a one as he being about to do so frontEHISHA for the true translated of 2 Kings 8:13). Herein Elisha fulfilled Elijah's commission, that he should appoint Hazael king of Syria to be the Lord's scourge of fits guilty people (1 Kings 19:15). Hazael having murdered Benhadad became king, and fought with Ahaziah king of Judah, and Jehoram of Israel, for Ramoth Gilead (2 Kings 8:28). The atrocities foretold (the same as in Hosea 13:16) were doubtless perpetrated by him when in Jehu's days "Jehovah cut Israel short, and Hazael smote them in all the coasts of Israel, from Jordan eastward, all ... Gilead, the Gadites, Reubenites, Manassites, from Aroer by the Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan" (2 Kings 10:32-33). Jehovah therefore threatened, and executed his threat, "for three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron; and I will send a fire into the house of Hazael," etc. (Amos 1:3.) The very same image is used in the independent history (an undesigned coincidence and mark of genuineness), concerning the king of Syria's oppression of Israel under Jehoahaz, Jehu's son: "he made them like the dust by threshing" (2 Kings 13:7)...