Thus is this event described in the Book of Kings: “And when Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal. Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bed chamber, from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was with her hid in the house of the Lord six years. And Athaliah did reign over the land.” This story, which furnishes the subject of one of Racine’s masterworks, is more dramatic than probable. The Bible does not tell us of whom this royal family, exterminated by Athaliah, was composed. The brothers and nephews of Ahaziah had been assassinated by Jehu on the road to Samaria; there is no reason why Athaliah should have completed the massacre by killing her grandchildren. If some of the king’s sons remained at Jerusalem safe from the rage of Jehu, no one had more interest in keeping them than the queen mother, as she was their guardian and could legalise her power by reigning in their name. All we know is that six years later the high priest Jehoiada presented a child to the soldiers, telling them that he was Ahaziah’s son, and the last branch of David’s race. This child was proclaimed king under the name of Jehoash; Athaliah heard acclamations and rushed out of the palace and was slain by order of the high priest. The temple of Baal was invaded, and the high priest Mattan slain before the altar. Jehoiada appointed himself guardian of the new king, who was only seven years old: it was a government ruled by the priests. The kingdom of Israel was divided for the first time in Jehu’s reign, for it is easier to deal with disarmed people than to cope with strange invasions. Hazael, the usurper, raised, like Jehu, by the prophet Elisha, conquered all the region to the east of the Jordan: “the land of Gilead, the territories of Gath, Reuben and Manasseh, from Aroer on the torrent Arnon to Gilead and Bashan.” The time was not far distant when the kingdoms of Israel and Damascus were to be absorbed by the powerful Assyrian Empire. Hazael, twice beaten by Shalmaneser II, acknowledges his supremacy, Jehu sent him a tribute of gold and silver bars.