The Jews had rescued the body of their king and had brought it back in his chariot to Jerusalem; they proclaimed in his stead, not his eldest son Eliakim, but the youngest, Shallum, who adopted the name of Jehoahaz on ascending the throne. He was a young man, twenty-three years of age, light and presumptuous of disposition, opposed to the reform movement, and had doubtless been unwise enough to display his hostile feelings towards the conqueror. Necho summoned him to Eiblah, deposed him after a reign of three months, condemned him to prison, and replaced him by Eliakim, who changed his name to that of Jehoiakim--"he whom Jahveh exalts;" and after laying Judah under a tribute of one hundred talents of silver and one of gold, the Egyptian monarch returned to his own country. Certain indications lead us to believe that he was obliged to undertake other punitive expeditions. The Philistines, probably deceived by false rumours of his defeat, revolted against him about the time that he was engaged in hostilities in Northern Syria, and on receiving news not only of his safety, but of the victory he had gained, their alarm was at once aroused. Judah forgot her own sorrows on seeing the peril in which they stood, and Jeremiah pronounced against them a prophecy full of menace. "Behold," he cried, "waters rise up out of the north, and shall become an overflowing stream, and shall overflow the land and all that is therein, the city and them that dwell therein; and the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land shall howl... for the Lord will spoil the Philistines, the remnant of the Isle of Caphtor. Baldness is come upon Gaza; Ascalon is dumb with terror, and you, all that are left of the giants, how long will ye tear your faces in your mourning?"* Ascalon was sacked and then Gaza,** and Necho at length was able to re-enter his domains, doubtless by the bridge of Zalu, following in this his models, his heroic ancestors of the great Theban dynasties. * [R.V., "Ashkolon is brought to nought, the remnant of their valley: how long wilt thou cut thyself?"--Tr.] ** Jer. xlvii., which is usually attributed to a period subsequent to the defeat at Carchemish or even later; the title, which alone mentions the Egyptians, is wanting in the LXX. If we admit that the enemy coming from the north is the Egyptian and not the Chaldaean, as do most writers, the only time that danger could have threatened Philistia from the Egyptians coming from the north, was when Necho, victorious, was returning from his first campaign. In this case, the Kadytis of Herodotus, which has caused so much trouble to commentators, would certainly be Gaza, and there would be no difficulty in explaining how the tradition preserved by the Greek historian placed the taking of this town after the battle of Megiddo.