ARIOCH. — Name of three biblical figures.
1. One of the four eastern kings who invaded Pentapoli (v.) and were driven back by Abraham (Gen. 14, 1. 9). The Vulgate (following Symmachus) makes him “king of Pontus”; but the kingdom of this name did not yet exist. He was (according to the Masoretic text and the Septuagint) king of Ellasar, which corresponds to Larsa in Babylonia.
It is generally held (following G. Smith and Eb. Schrader, 1872) that A. was the contemporary of Hammurabi, Rim-Sin, or “servant of Sin” (the cuneiform A-ri-a-ku has not, however, been found to date; according to Dhorme, Rim-Sin would have become Rivaaku, then Eri-vaaku and Ariak), the last king of Larsa (ca. 1985–1925 B.C.), brother and successor of Arad-Sin (ca. 1997–1985 B.C.), son of Kudur-Mabuk of the Elamite dynasty (Kudurids). Rim-Sin’s presence in the punitive expedition of Chodorlahamor (v.) of Elam with his confederates should be assigned to the beginning of Hammurabi’s reign; Hammurabi subsequently expelled the Elamites, including the king of Larsa, from Mesopotamia. But Böhl and Jirku,
Amrafel (v.) with Hammurabi, do not accept in A. a king of Larsa contemporary with Hammurabi.
2. Chief (rabh) of the king’s forces or bodyguard (fabbahajā = attendants) of Nebuchadnezzar, from whom he received orders to kill the diviners unable to interpret the king’s dream, and before whom he introduced Daniel (Dan. 2, 14–16. 24 ff.); duties which in the eastern courts we find entrusted to such officers (II Sam. 4, 12; 1, 15).
3. King of the Elamites, that is, of an Elamite dynasty (the Vulgate has “Erioch, rex Elicorum”), from whom the Mesopotamian plain of Ragau took its name (Iud. 1, 6). This may perhaps have been the king of Larsa (v. above, 1), whose defeat by Hammurabi may have been preserved in the toponymy. Antonino Romeo