and then Hadrach,* both of which, casting Hamath into the shade, succeeded in holding their own against Hazael and his successors.  He renewed hostilities, however, against the Hebrews, and did not relax his efforts till he had thoroughly brought them into subjection.  Jehu suffered loss on all his frontiers, “from Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, the Keubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the valley of Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan,"** Israel became thus once more entirely dependent on Damascus, but the sister kingdom of Judah still escaped its yoke through the energy of her rulers.

* Mansuati successfully resisted Ramman-nirari in 797 B.C., but he probably caused its ruin, for after this only expeditions against Hadrach are mentioned.  Mansuati was in the basin of the Orontes, and the manner in which the Assyrian texts mention it in connection with Zimyra seems to show that it commanded the opening in the Lebanon range between Cole-Syria and Phoenicia.  The site of Khatarika, the Hadrach of Zech. ix. 1, is not yet precisely determined; but it must, as well as Mansuati, have been in the neighbourhood of Hamath, perhaps between Hamath and Damascus.  It appears for the first time in 772.

     ** 2 Kings x. 32, 33.  Even if verse 33 is a later addition,
     it gives a correct idea of the situation, except as regards
     Bashan, which had been lost to Israel for some time already.

Athaliah reigned seven years, not ingloriously; but she belonged to the house of Ahab, and the adherents of the prophets, whose party had planned Jehu’s revolution, could no longer witness with equanimity one of the accursed race thus prospering and ostentatiously practising the rites of Baal-worship within sight of the great temple of Jahveh.  On seizing the throne, Athaliah had sought out and put to death all the members of the house of David who had any claim to the succession; but Jeho-sheba, half-sister of Ahaziah, had with difficulty succeeded in rescuing Joash, one of the king’s sons.  Her husband was the high priest Jehoiada, and he secreted his nephew for six years in the precincts of the temple; at the end of that time, he won over the captains of the royal guard, bribed a section of the troops, and caused them to swear fealty to the child as their legitimate sovereign.  Athaliah, hastening to discover the cause of the uproar, was assassinated.  Mattan, chief priest of Baal, shared her fate; and Jehoiada at once restored to Jahveh the preeminence which the gods of the alien had for a time usurped (837).  At first his influence over his pupil was supreme, but before long the memory of his services faded away, and the king sought only how to rid himself of a tutelage which had grown irksome.  The temple had suffered during the late wars, and repairs were much needed.  Joash ordained that for the future all moneys put into the sacred treasury—­which of right belonged to the king—­should be