THE MOABITE STONE
Thus is this event described in the Book of Kings: “And when Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal. Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bed chamber, from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was with her hid in the house of the Lord six years. And Athaliah did reign over the land.”
This story, which furnishes the subject of one of Racine’s masterworks, is more dramatic than probable. The Bible does not tell us of whom this royal family, exterminated by Athaliah, was composed. The brothers and nephews of Ahaziah had been assassinated by Jehu on the road to Samaria; there is no reason why Athaliah should have completed the massacre by killing her grandchildren. If some of the king’s sons remained at Jerusalem safe from the rage of Jehu, no one had more interest in keeping them than the queen mother, as she was their guardian and could legalise her power by reigning in their name. All we know is that six years later the high priest Jehoiada presented a child to the soldiers, telling them that he was Ahaziah’s son, and the last branch of David’s race.
This child was proclaimed king under the name of Jehoash; Athaliah heard acclamations and rushed out of the palace and was slain by order of the high priest. The temple of Baal was invaded, and the high priest Mattan slain before the altar. Jehoiada appointed himself guardian of the new king, who was only seven years old: it was a government ruled by the priests.
The kingdom of Israel was divided for the first time in Jehu’s reign, for it is easier to deal with disarmed people than to cope with strange invasions. Hazael, the usurper, raised, like Jehu, by the prophet Elisha, conquered all the region to the east of the Jordan: “the land of Gilead, the territories of Gath, Reuben and Manasseh, from Aroer on the torrent Arnon to Gilead and Bashan.” The time was not far distant when the kingdoms of Israel and Damascus were to be absorbed by the powerful Assyrian Empire. Hazael, twice beaten by Shalmaneser II, acknowledges his supremacy, Jehu sent him a tribute of gold and silver bars.
These facts, which the Bible does not mention, are contained in two Assyrian inscriptions, one of which is found on the obelisk of Nimrud, and the other on a tablet in the British Museum. In these inscriptions Jehu is called the son of Omri, which proves that the Syrians knew little about the genealogy of the kings of Israel. A bas-relief on the Nimrud obelisk represents persons of Jewish or Aramæan types, wearing turbans with pointed tops, bringing presents, and one of them is prostrating himself before Shalmaneser. It is supposed that this bas-relief, twice repeated, represents the submission of Hazael and Jehu. If Jehu, in declaring himself vassal to the king of Assyria, hoped for protection against Hazael, he was mistaken. Shalmaneser did not intervene in the quarrels of his vassals and Jehu left his son Jehoahaz a weakened and mutilated kingdom in 815 B.C.
[ca. 815-780 B.C.]
Hazael, and his son, Ben-Hadad III, who succeeded him, reduced the Israelite army to ten thousand footmen, fifty horsemen, and ten chariots. Israel did not begin to recover itself until the reign of the son of Jehoahaz, named Joash like the king of Judah; the two kingdoms of the north and south were once more governed by kings of the same name. At Jerusalem the priests, who had governed without control since Athaliah’s death, appropriated to themselves the revenues destined for the maintenance of the temple. At the end of twenty-three years, as these repairs were not made, Jehoash, who was then thirty, wished to put an end to this scandal and withdrew from them the free disposal of money. The discontent of the priests only broke out after Jehoiada’s death, perhaps because thenceforth Jehoash took less caution. According to the Book of Chronicles, he had the son of his benefactor, who was remonstrating with him, stoned by the people, and it is to avenge this death that he was assassinated on his return from a war with the Syrians, in which he was wounded. The Book of Kings does not mention this war, and on the contrary says that Jehoash diverted Hazael by giving him the treasures of the temple. The Book of Kings does not mention the murder of Jehoiada’s son, neither does it explain the reason of Jehoash’s assassination. His son, Amaziah, succeeded him and punished his murderers, “but the children of the murderers he slew not,” which indicated an improvement in the ideas and morals of the country (797 B.C.).
The kingdom of Israel, so weakened in the reigns of Jehu and Jehoahaz, was raised by three victories of Jehoash over Ben-Hadad, son of Hazael. It is said that they were predicted by Elisha on his death-bed.