When Toi king of Hamath,.... Which was another small kingdom in Syria, perhaps lately erected to defend themselves against Hadadezer, and this the first king of it, at least the first we hear of; his name is Tou in 1Ch 18:9; where in the Targum he is called king of Antioch.
Hamath lay to the north of the land of Canaan;See Gill on "Nu 34:8": it is said to be three days' journey from Tripoli, and that it stands in the midway to Aleppo, on a very goodly plain, replenished with corn and cotton wool, but very much in ruins, and falls more and more to decay: at this day (says my author, who travelled in those parts in the beginning of the seventeenth century) there is scarce one half of the wall standing, which hath been very fair and strong.
The king of this placeheard that David had smitten all the host of Hadadezer; the news of which soon reached him, he being in the neighbourhood. Cartwright's Preacher's Travels, p.