Turning to the southern kingdom, we notice that it was some time before the Davidic king made an effort to obtain foreign protection. In Jeroboam’s time, indeed, it would have been useless. In Rehoboam’s fifth year the king of Mizrim proved his regard for Jeroboam and for his own selfish advantage by invading the Jewish dominion. Resistance was hopeless; Jerusalem itself was taken, and the departure of Cushi (the name is corrupted in our own texts into Shishak) was only purchased at a great price. It was the third king, Asa, who, finding himself in danger of becoming the vassal of Baasha, became virtually the vassal of the king of Cusham; the story of his having defeated an army of Cushite invaders (at Zephath, or Zarephath?) must surely be apocryphal. Asa and his son Jehoshaphat are both praised for their fidelity to Yahveh. The latter king, however, managed to exchange a Cushite for an Israelite suzerain, and according to the (late) Chronicler gained a victory over the (southern) Aramites or Jerahmeelites in the Negeb (the text of 2 Chronicles xx. has suffered, as regards the geographical setting). In the war against Moab, Jehoshaphat did a vassal’s service to Ahab, and we may suppose that there was a Judahite contingent in the force of ten thousand men sent by Ahab to the battle of Qarqar. We are also told that he sought to open once more direct communication by sea with the gold-country Ophir. His son Jehoram continued loyal to the northern Israelitish king. Asa had found it impossible to oppose a marriage between the crown-prince and Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel. So, officially at any rate, there was religious as well as political union between northern and southern Israel; Jehoram, we are told, “walked in the way (_i.e._, practised the cultus) of the house of Ahab.” The revolt of the Edomites, who had hitherto recognised the supremacy of Judah, marks the reign of Jehoram. His son Ahaziah continued his policy, and just after he had performed a vassal’s duty before Ramoth in the southern Gilead (still fought for by the Aramites), he fell a victim with his uncle and suzerain, Jehoram of Israel, to the machinations of the ambitious general, Jehu. The name of Jehu (as it seems, an Israelite of the Negeb) is attached to a revolution which had different results from those which had been contemplated. We have only the account of it which was given by the prophetic school of narrators. According to this, the revolution was planned by a prophet named Elisha, and received the sanction of the sheikh of a subdivision of the Kenites, called Rechabites. Certainly it is probable enough that the prophets of the Negeb interfered with politics, and that that portion of the Kenites which had not adopted a settled mode of life was greatly agitated by the continuance of that sensuous form of cultus which was favoured by the house of Omri. JEHU AND FOLLOWING KINGS