rebelled; Pul (Tiglath-pileser), king of Assyria, invaded the country, and carried off a large amount of tribute, probably amounting to two millions of dollars; and thirty years later he entered the land and carried away many captives.  At a later date the people became idolatrous, and Shalmaneser, an Assyrian king, reduced them to subjection, and carried numbers of them into Assyria, and replaced them with men from Babylon and other places.  By the intermarriage of Jews remaining in the country with these foreigners a mixed race, called Samaritans, sprang up.

The southern section of the country, known as the kingdom of Judah, was ruled over by nineteen kings and one queen for a period of about three hundred and seventy-five years.  Asa, one of the good kings, was a religious reformer—­even “his mother he removed from being queen, because she had made an abominable image for an Asherah; and Asa cut down her image and burnt it at the brook Kidron.”  But he, like many other reformers, failed to make his work thorough, for “the high places were not taken away:  nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect with Jehovah all his days.”  Joash caused a chest to be placed “at the gate of the house of Jehovah,” into which the people put “the tax that Moses, the servant of God, laid upon Israel in the wilderness,” until they had gathered an abundance of money, with which the house of God was repaired, for the wicked sons of Athaliah had broken it up and bestowed the dedicated things upon the Baalim.  But after the death of Jehoida, the priest, Joash was himself led into idolatry, and when Zechariah, the son of Jehoida, rebuked the people for turning from God, they stoned him to death by the order of King Joash.  The last words of the dying martyr were:  “The Lord look upon it and require it.”  This is strangely different from the last expression of Stephen, who “kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”  Amaziah returned “from the slaughter of the Edomites,” and set up the gods of the idolatrous enemies he had whipped, “to be his gods.”  Ahaz was a wicked idolater, worshiping Baal and sacrificing his own sons.

In strong contrast with such men as these we have the name of Hezekiah, whose prosperous reign was a grand period of reformation and improvement.  He was twenty-five years old when he came on the throne, and in the twenty-nine years he ruled, “he removed the high places, and brake the pillars, and cut down the Asherah.”  The brazen serpent, made by Moses in the wilderness, had become an object of worship, but Hezekiah called it “a piece of brass,” and broke it in pieces.  The passover had not been kept “in great numbers in such sort as it is written,” so Hezekiah sent messengers from city to city to call the people to observe the passover.  Some “laughed them to scorn, and mocked them,” but others “humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem,” and in the second month the “very great assembly * * * killed the passover. * * * So there was great joy in Jerusalem; for since the time of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel, there was not the like in Jerusalem.”