assassin king, and the people found themselves powerless to reject the nominee of the army.*** * 1 Kings xiv. 22-24; cf. 2 Chron. xi. 18-23, where the details given in addition to those in the Booh of Kings seem to be of undoubted authenticity. ** 1 Kings xv. 1-8; cf. 2 Chron. xiii. The Booh of Kings describes his mother as Maacah, the daughter of Absalom (xv. 10), which would seem to indicate that he was the brother and not the son of Abijam. The uncertainty on this point is of long standing, for the author of Chronicles makes Abijam’s mother out in one place to be Micaiah, daughter of Uriel of Gibcah (xiii. 2), and in another (xi. 20) Maacah, daughter of Absalom. *** 1 Kings xv. 27-34. Baasha pressed forward resolutely his campaign against Judah. He seized Eamah and fortified it;* and Asa, feeling his incapacity to dislodge him unaided, sought to secure an ally. Egypt was too much occupied with its own internal dissensions to be able to render any effectual help, but a new power, which would profit quite as much as Judah by the overthrow of Israel, was beginning to assert itself in the north. Damascus had, so far, led an obscure and peaceful existence; it had given way before Egypt and Chaldæa whenever the Egyptians or Chaldseans had appeared within striking distance, but had refrained from taking any part in the disturbances by which Syria was torn asunder. Having been occupied by the Amorites, it threw its lot in with theirs, keeping, however, sedulously in the background: while the princes of Qodshû waged war against the Pharaohs, undismayed by frequent reverses, Damascus did not scruple to pay tribute to Thûtmosis III. and his descendants, or to enter into friendly relations with them. Meanwhile the Amorites had been overthrown, and Qodshû, ruined by the Asiatic invasion, soon became little more than an obscure third-rate town;** the Aramaeans made themselves masters of Damascus about the XIIth century, and in their hands it continued to be, just as in the preceding epochs, a town without ambitions and of no great renown. * 1 Kings xv. 17; cf. 2 Ghron. xvi. 1. ** Qodshû is only once mentioned in the Bible (2 Sam. xxiv. 6), in which passage its name, misunderstood by the Massoretic scribe, has been restored from the Septuagint text.