Athaliah's rule--Early years of Joash--Proclamation of Joash by Jehoiada--Athaliah slain--Religious Revival--Elisha--Repairing of the Temple--Death of Jehoiada and of his Son--Invasion of Israel by Hazael--Jehoahaz--Murder of Joash, King of Judah--Jehoash, King of Israel--Defeat of the Aramæans--Amaziah--Conquest of Edom--Death of Elisha--Amaziah defeated by Jehoash--Jeroboam II.--Death of Amaziah. 887-805 B. C. E. It is a striking fact that Israelitish women, the appointed priestesses of chastity and morality, displayed a special inclination for the immoral worship of Baal and Astarte. Maachah, the queen-mother in Judah, established an altar in Jerusalem for the worship of idols; Jezebel had erected one in Samaria, and now Athaliah followed the same course in Jerusalem. Yet, this was not Athaliah's sole nor her greatest sin. The daughter of Jezebel greatly surpassed her mother in cruelty. The victims of Jezebel had been prophets, staunch adherents of the ancestral law,--at all events, persons whom she considered as her enemies. Athaliah, however, shed the blood of her own relations, and did not hesitate to destroy the family of her husband and her son. No sooner had she received tidings of the death of her son Ahaziah, than she ordered the soldiers devoted to her cause to execute all the surviving members of the house of David in Jerusalem. Only the youngest of the princes, Joash, who was not quite one year old, was saved from sharing the fate of his brothers by the special intervention of Jehoshebah. What did Jezebel's bloodthirsty daughter expect to accomplish by this massacre? Was her wickedness the outcome of an ambitious scheme to gain possession of the throne, to the exclusion of all rivals? Or did Athaliah, herself a firm believer in the worship of Baal, desire to establish and diffuse this worship throughout Jerusalem and Judah, and was it in pursuance of that design that she destroyed the remnant of the house of David, in order to have her hands unfettered? Did she hope to succeed where her mother had failed, and by establishing idolatrous practices in Jerusalem, to give new fervour to the Phœnician worship?