280 BATTLES OF THE BIBLE.

THE NIGHT OF ISRAEL.

“Alas! we were warn’d, but we reck’d not the warning,
Till our warriors grew weak in the day of despair,
And our glory was fled as the light cloud of morning,
That gleams for a moment, and melts into air.

‘ As the proud heathens trampled o’er Zion’s sad daughter,
She wept tears of blood o’er her guilt and her woe,
_ For the voice of her God had commission’d the slaughter,

The rod of his vengeance had pointed the blow.”
DALE.

Marianne. You have not told us any thing about
Judah ; who was king there ?

Grandfather. Joash, whose life was saved by his aunt
Jehosheba. She hid him when Athaliah, his grandmother,
would have put him to death, at the time that she killed
all the seed-royal. He was only one year old, and his
aunt kept him six years in the house of the Lord. She
was wife to the high priest.

Marianne. Was he a good king when he grew up?

Grandfather. He conducted himself wisely as long as
Jehoiada, the high priest, lived, for he suffered himself to
be directed by him ; but when he died the king became
wicked, and served false gods. To punish him, Hazael,
king of Syria, came up against Judah. Crime makes