JEHORAM (niro, exalted b_v yehovah ; Sept.
'1wpcip.), eldest son and sUccessor ofJeh oshaph at, and fifth king of Judah, who began to reign (separately) in E.c. 889, at the age of thirty-five years, and reigned five years. It is indeed said in the general account that he began to reign at the age of thirty two, and that he reigned eight years ; but the con clusions deducible from the fact that his reign began in the seventh year of joram, kin.- of Israel, shew that the reigm thus stated dates back thrce years into the reign of his father, who from this is seen to have' associated his eldest son with him in the later years of his reign.
Jehoram profited little by this association. He had unhappily been married to Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel ; and her influence seems to have neutralized all the good he might have derived from the example of his father. One of the first acts of his reign was to put his brothers to death and seize the valuable appanages which their father had in his lifetime bestowed upon them. After this we are not surprised to find him giving way to the gross idolatries of that new and strange kind—the Plicenician—which had been brought into Israel by Jezebel, and into Judah by her daughter Athaliah. For these atrocities the Lord
let forth his anger against Jehoram and his king dom. The Edomites revolted, and, according to old prophecies (Gen. xxvii. 40), shook off the yoke of Judah. The Philistines on one side, and the Arabians and Cushites on the other, also grew bold against a king forsaken of God, and in repeated in vasions spoiled the land of all its substance ; they even ravaged the royal palaces, and took away the wives and children of the king, leaving him only one son, Allaziah. Nor was this all ; Jelloram was in his last days afflicted with a frightful disease in his bowels, which, from the terms employed in de scribing it, appears to have been malignant dysen tery in its most shocking and tormenting form. After a disgraceful reign, and a most painful death, public opinion inflicted the posthumous dishonour of refusing him a place in the sepulchre of the kings. Jehoram was by far the most impious and cruel tyrant that had as yet occupied the throne of Judah, though he was rivalled or surpassed by some of his successors (2 K.ings viii. 16-24 ; 2 Chron. xxi.)