e high places continued to be tolerated by him as
sites of worship, and even Jerusalem was not free from manifestations
of such idolatry as was associated with the old Canaanite religion. He
reigned seventeen years, and was interred in the city of David;* Abijam,
the eldest son of Maacah, succeeded him, and followed in his evil ways.
Three years later Asa came to the throne,** no opposition being raised
to his accession. In Israel matters did not go so smoothly. When
Jeroboam, after a reign of twenty-two years, was succeeded by his son
Nadab, about the year 905 B.C., it was soon evident that the instinct
of loyalty to a particular dynasty had not yet laid any firm hold on the
ten tribes. The peace between the Philistines and Israel was quite as
unstable as that between Israel and Judah: an endless guerilla warfare
was waged on the frontier, Gibbethon being made to play much the same
part in this region as Ramah had done in regard to Jerusalem. For the
moment it was in the hands of the Philistines, and in the second year
of his reign Nadab had gone to lay siege to it in force, when he was
assassinated in his tent by one of his captains, a certain Baasha,
son of Ahijah, of the tribe of Issachar: the soldiers proclaimed the
assassin king, and the people found themselves powerless to reject the
nominee of the army.***

* 1 Kings xiv. 22-24; cf. 2 Chron. xi. 18-23, where the
details given in addition to those in the Booh of Kings seem
to be of undoubted authenticity.

** 1 Kings xv. 1-8; cf. 2 Chron. xiii. The Booh of Kings
describes his mother as Maacah, the daughter of Absalom (xv.
10), which would seem to indicate that he was the brother
and not the son of Abijam. The uncertainty on this point is
of long standing, for the author of Chronicles makes
Abijam's mother out in one place to be Micaiah, daughter of
Uriel of Gibcah (xiii. 2), and in another (xi. 20) Maacah,
daughter of Absalom.

*** 1 Kings xv. 27-34.

Baasha pressed forward resolutely his campaign against Judah. He seized
Eamah and fortified it;* and Asa, feeling his incapacity to dislodge him
unaided, sought to secure an ally. Egypt was too much occupied with its
own internal dissensions to be able to render any effectual help, but a
new power, which would profit quite as much as Judah by the overthrow
of Israel, was beginning to assert itself in the north. Damascus had,
so far, led an obscure and