▼Against this Bertheau remarks, after the example of Thenius: “When we consider that the wife of Abijah and mother of Asa was also called Maachah, 1Ki 15:13; 2Ch 15:16, and that in 1Ki 15:2 this Maachah is again called the daughter of Abishalom, and that this latter statement is not met with in the Chronicle, we are led to conjecture that Maachah, the mother of Abijah, the daughter of Abishalom, has been confounded with Maachah the mother of Asa, the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah, and that in our passage Asa’s mother is erroneously named instead of the mother of Abijah.” This conjecture is a strange fabric of perverted facts and inconsequential reasoning. In 1Ki 15:2 Abijam’s mother is called Maachah the daughter of Abishalom, exactly as in 2Ch 11:20 and 2Ch 11:21; and in 1Ki 15:13, in perfect agreement with 2Ch 15:16, it is stated that Asa removed Maachah from the dignity of Gebira because she had made herself a statute of Asherah. This Maachah, deposed by Asa, is called in 1Ki 15:10 the daughter of Abishalom, and only this latter remark is omitted from the Chronicle. How from these statements we must conclude that the mother of Abijah, Maachah the daughter of Abishalom, has been confounded with Maachah the mother of Asa, the daughter of Uriel, we cannot see. The author of the book of Kings knows only one Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom, whom in 2Ch 15:2 he calls mother, i.e., גּבירה, i.e., Sultana Walide of Abijah, and in 2Ch 15:10 makes to stand in the same relationship of mother to Asa. From this, however, the only natural and logically sound conclusion which can be drawn is that Abijam’s mother, Rehoboam’s wife, occupied the position of queen-mother, not merely during the three years’ reign of Abijam, but also during the first years of the reign of his son Asa, as his grandmother, until Asa had deprived her of this dignity because of her idolatry. It is nowhere said in Scripture that this woman was Abijam’s wife, but that is a conclusion drawn by Thenius and Bertheau only from her being called אמּו, his (Asa’s) mother, as if אם could denote merely the actual mother, and not the grandmother. Finally, the omission in the Chronicle of the statement in 1Ki 15:10, “The name of his mother was Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom,” does not favour in the very least the conjecture that Asa’s mother has been confounded with the mother of Abijah; for it is easily explained by the fact that at the accession of Asa no change was made in reference to the dignity of queen-mother, Abijah’s mother still holding that position even under Asa.