Jehoram in his people, his children, his wives, and all his substance. For even this more public calamity had a personal

character, since, as we read, "Jehovah stirred up against Jehoram the spirit" of these enemies; and very markedly their

plunder was confined to the royal property. And when the second part of the threatened judgment befell the king, and

that incurable internal disease259 attacked him of which he ultimately died, it seems difficult to understand how those

who witnessed all this, and still more, they who succeeded him, could have maintained the same attitude as he towards

We can only account for it by the rooted belief that Jehovah was only a national deity, who was angry with those who

forsook His service; but that the new deity, Baal, who had proved so mighty a god to the surrounding nations, would by

and by take them under his protection. And as between the stern demands and the purity of the service of Jehovah, Who

claimed of royalty absolute submission and simple stewardship and Who elevated all His people into a royal

priesthood, and the voluptuous luxuriousness of the worship of Baal, who placed king and people in so very different a

relationship to each other and to himself, rulers of the character of Jehoram or Ahaziah would not hesit ate in their

We have evidence that the ungodly rule of Jehoram was not popular in Judah. "He departed without being desired" by

his people, nor did they make any burning of precious spices at his funeral, such as was customary at the obsequies of

kings (comp. 2 Chronicles 16:14; Jeremiah 34:5). And although "they buried him in the city of David," yet "not in the

sepulchers of the kings."261 If these notices seem to indicate a hostile popular feeling, the same inference comes to us

from the unusual s tatement that "the inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah, his youngest son, king in his stead" (2

Chronicles 22:1).

It would probably be too much to conclude that there was opposition to the accession of one who must have been

known to be like -minded wit h his father on the part of the Levite and Priest party, although the revolt of the priest city

Libnah and the later activity of the high priest Jehoiada and of the Levites on behalf of Joash (22:11; 23) seem to point

in that direction. But we cannot be mistaken in concluding that Ahaziah was placed on the throne by a faction in

Jerusalem favorable to the new order of things. And it needs no elaborate argument to convince us that, alike

religiously and politically, a regime must have been profoundly unpopular which had reversed the whole former order

of things, was associated with the permanent loss of Edom, the defection of so important a center as Libnab, and the

victorious incursions of Philistines and Arab bands. To these outward calamities must be added the paramount sway of

a woman, such as the daughter of Ahab, and the remodeling of Judah after the pattern of Israel, which even mere

patriots must have felt to be a most humiliating abdication of supremacy in favor of the northern kingdom. And in the

his tory of the brief reign of Ahaziah, as well as in the later rising which resulted in the death of Athaliah, the existence

of two parties in Judah must be kept in view; the one representing the corrupt court faction, the other the growing

popular feeling in favor of return to the old order of things.