'

I 0

,r7l

ACADEMICAL LECTURES

ON THE

JEWISH SCRIPTURES AND ANTIQUITIES.

VOL. in.

(V
ACADEMICAL LECTURES

JEWISH SCRIPTURES

ANTIQUITIES.

By JOHN GORHAM PALFREY, D. D., LL. D.
'if

VOL. III.
PROPHETS, CONTINUED AND CONCLUDED.

' Nee Deus intersit, niai dignus vindice nodus
Incident." Horat. Ars Poetica.

BOSTON:
CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY,
111 Washington Street.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES S. FEANCIS AND COMPANY.
1852.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
John Gorham Palfret,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE:
MKTCALF AND COMPANY,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

PREFACE

In the work now completed, I have aimed to show
what it is, in the ancient Jewish books, that a Chris
tian is called on to believe ; and that all that he is
called on to believe is credible and well substantiated.
I have not shrunk from any conclusions to which
the facts and reasons conducted my mind, " being per
suaded," with good Hooker, " of nothing more than
this, that, whether it be in matter of speculation or of
practice, no untruth can possibly avail the patron and
defender long, and that things most truly are likewise
most behoovefully spoken."
Judaism is not our rule of faith and conduct. It
was superseded, eighteen centuries ago, by Christian
ity. But Christianity recognizes the Jewish religion
as a revelation from God. It assumes a responsibility
for the divine origin of that religion. Hence the evi
dence for the authority of Judaism complicates itself
with the evidences of Christianity. The nature and
intimacy of the connection between the two systems
have been differently understood. Opinions very
vague, and, when not vague, often very erroneous, have
been entertained by Christians on that subject. Their

VI PREFACE.
wrong opinions have given a great advantage to the
unbeliever. Doctrines and interpretations have been
admitted by them to be involved in a belief in Chris
tianity, which the unbeliever has been able to repre
sent with great plausibility, and often with truth, to
be incredible, and dishonorable to religion. I have
long been under the impression, that no other cause
obstructs so powerfully the intelligent reception of
Christianity at the present day, as the mistaken no
tions which prevail concerning the Old Testament
Scriptures and dispensation, and their connection with
the New ; and that the great service to be rendered to
Christianity is that of relieving it, by a careful but
not timid criticism, from the objections arising out of
those errors. My hope for these volumes is, that they
may be found to be of some value as proving that the
Old Testament, rightly understood, in no way conflicts
with, or embarrasses, a Christian's faith.
In this survey of the Jewish Scriptures I have en
deavoured to ascertain the authority, the design, and
the sense of the several books. Rejecting altogether
the idea, that the mere presence of a book in what is
called the Canon is proof of its having been written by
inspiration, or of its possessing in any way an author
itative character, the proofs of that authority which
has been indiscriminately attributed to this mass of
writings have been sought, where alone, if in fact
existing, they are to be found, in the external history
and in the contents of the books respectively.
In opposition to many modern critics of the high-

PREFACE. Vll
est name, I believe the traditional and common opin
ion to be correct, that the Pentateuch is substantially
the composition of Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews,
though it has since received some interpolations and
other alterations, most of which, it is probable, we are
still able to detect.*
There is a tradition mentioned by several of the
Christian Fathers, which seems to me very credible,
and which, could we know it to be true, would afford
a satisfactory explanation of the present textual con
dition of the Pentateuch, supposing it to have been
the work of Moses. It is, as expressed in Tertullian's
words, that, " after the destruction of Jerusalem by
the Babylonians, the whole body of the Jewish writ
ings was renewed by Ezra."f This statement, suppos
ing it well founded, disposes of many questions. In
his labors on the Pentateuch, to fit it for the con
venient use of the people of his age, Ezra might be
* The subject of the testimony of the New Testament to the authorship
of the books of the Old, is one which I have not in these volumes undertaken
to discuss. But every reader calls to mind such references of parts of the
Pentateuch to Moses as those in Matt. xix. 7, 8 ; John v. 46 ; vii. 19-33. —
Since the publication of my earlier volumes, important light has been thrown
upon the question, whether alphabetical writing was in free use anywhere
as early as the time of Moses, by the discoveries in Nineveh, and, what is
more to the purpose, in Egypt. The Turin papyrus of the " Book of the
Dead," published by Lepsius (" Todtenbuch der Aegypter," Leipzig, 1842),
is referred to the thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth century before the Chris
tian era (Vorwort, s. IT). And the substance of the book is traced seven
centuries further back. (Comp. Bunsen, " Egypt's Place in Universal His
tory," in Cottrell's translation, Book I. Chap. I. § 4.)
f "De Cultu Fceminarum," Cap. I. § 3 (p. 151, edit. Rigalt.). The
word is "restauratum " ; literally, renewed, repaired, ox reconstructed. For
other forms of this tradition, see above, Vol. I. pp. 81, 82, note ; and for
others yet, see Fabricius, " Codex Pseudep. V. T.," Tom- 1, pp. 1156 et seq.

VU1 PREFACE.
expected to transfer it from the ancient Hebrew char
acter to that Chaldee character with which his coun
trymen in his time were better acquainted, and in
which it has actually come into our hands. He would
be likely to change ancient forms of language for
others more familiar and intelligible; and herein would
be another answer to the argument for a modern origin
of the Pentateuch, drawn from the resemblance of its
phraseology to that of later books.* And he would
be likely to introduce those notes, and other additions,
which,, as was shown in the examination of the Penta
teuch, in my previous volumes, must be referred to a
later time than that of Moses.
In the writings which I understand to have come
to us on the authority of the Hebrew lawgiver, I find
nothing which, fairly interpreted and rightly under
stood, is incredible, unworthy of God, or dishonorable
to religion. To rescue the Law from objections of
this nature, occasioning uneasiness to many Christian
minds, was an object continually kept in view in my
Lectures on the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy. Nor am I aware of any objection
* The orthography of our English version has been changed from time to
time, and is now very different from that of the original edition. To what
has been already said, however, on this subject in its place (Vol. I. p. 83), I
might have added that the phraseology of the laws in the Pentateuch, which,
or many of which, even by those who contest the authenticity of the whole
book, are commonly allowed to have descended from Moses, resembles the
phraseology of later times as much as does that of the historical passages ;
that the ancient written language of the Hebrews, consisting only of con
sonants, would not be so liable to change as a modern tongue ; and that
the written modern Arabic differs very little from the most ancient, though
the spoken language has undergone great alterations.

PREFACE. IX
of this class, which did not receive my direct attention
in its place, or to which I did not at least provide the
materials for such a reply as is satisfactory to my own
mind. Different minds, however, are differently consti
tuted, and, if a reader finds some passage which, on the
score of such objections as have been referred to, seems
to him irreconcilable with the supposition of its having
proceeded from a messenger of God, he will do well
to consider whether it may not have been one of those
additions, of which some, we certainly know, crept into
the work at a later time than that of Moses, suppos
ing the original to have been from his hand. Those
who believe him to have been the author of that work
unanimously acknowledge it to have received additions
since his time. Those who believe it to have been a
compilation of a later age generally understand it to
embrace portions which are to be attributed to him as
their author. Under these circumstances, the ques
tion whether one or another passage is to be ascribed
to him is with both classes of critics a subject open to
difference of opinion.
The Book of Genesis, substantially in the form in
which it now exists, I believe to be also a work of
Moses. But I do not regard the narratives which it
contains as having his authority for their correctness.
They do not relate to a period of which he could
write from personal knowledge, but to times much
earlier. The book is a compilation of materials which
had come down from preceding ages. In particular,
we trace in its structure an inartificial interweaving

PREFACE.

of two different compositions, which often repeat, and
often contradict, each other, and both of which are
contradicted by well-established facts in natural sci
ence, and by other considerations which admit of no
doubt. It is doing injustice to Moses to suppose that,
in his character of a messenger from God, or in any
character, he intended to pledge himself for the truth
of such statements. He collected and preserved them
for a different purpose, and a purpose equally legiti*
mate, — that of explaining and corroborating revela
tions and provisions of his Law, and winning for them
a more intelligent apprehension and a more willing
assent* In what manner this plan Was carried out, I
endeavoured particularly to show in the five Lectures
on the Book of Genesis.
I find no evidence of the occurrence of any mirac
ulous event between the time of Moses and the time
of Jesus. With the age of the Jewish lawgiver I
conceive the supernatural revelation in Judaism to
have been concluded ; and within his books I consider
the record of the Jewish revelation to be embraced^
just as much as the record of the Christian revelation
is embraced in the books of the New Testament. The
Catholic Church, in process of time, came to make
little or no distinction between the New Testament
books and the writings of the Fathers. Protestant
ism renewed and (for itself) established the distinc
tion, when it asserted the doctrine of the Sufficiency
* See Vol. II. pp. 6-9.

PREFACE. Xl
of the Scriptures. But it renewed and established this
distinction only for the New Testament. It should
have done so equally for the Old. Freeing itself here
also from ancient errors, Jewish as well as Catholic,
it should have insisted on a distinction between such
books as those of Joshua and Samuel on the one
hand, and the Pentateuch on the other, as wide as
that between the writings of Clement of Alexandria
or John of Damascus and those of the Evangelists
and Apostles.*
The historical books of the Old Testament after the
Pentateuch cannot be shown to have any authority
different in kind from that of other ancient histories.
* Says Coleridge, " To Moses alone, — to Moses in the recording no less
than in the receiving of the Law, — and to all and every part of the five
books, called the Books of Moses, the Jewish doctors of the generation be
fore, and coeval with, the Apostles, assigned that unmodified and absolute
tfieopneusty, which our divines, in words at least, attribute to the Canon col
lectively  The Jewish teachers confined this miraculous character to
the Pentateuch. Between the Mosaic and the Prophetic inspiration they as
serted such a difference as amounts to a diversity ; and between both the one
and the other, and the remaining books comprised under the title of Hagi-
ographa, the interval was still wider, and the inferiority in kind, and not
only in degree, was unequivocally expressed." (" Confessions of an In
quiring Spirit," Letter II.) I cannot go the whole length of some of these
statements ; but they may serve to show, that, in some of what may be
thought my most adventurous doctrines, I am no whit in advance of an
approved hierophant of the English Church. " When," says John Pye
Smith, one of the most approved doctors of English dissenting Orthodoxy,
" I reflect upon the difficulties, using the mildest term, which arise from an
endeavor to convert passages merely genealogical, topographical, numerical,
civil, military, fragments of antiquity, domestic or national, presenting no
character whatever of religious matter, — into a rule of faith and manners, —
I feel it impossible to accept the conclusion." Again, he characterizes such
portions of the Jewish Scriptures as " private memoirs or public records,
useful to the antiquary and the philologist, but which belong not to the rule
of faith or the directory of practice." (" Scripture Testimony to the Mes
siah," Vol. I. p. 54.)

Xll PREFACE.
They are of various degrees of merit and credibility ;
but, in respect to no one of them is there any proof
whatever that its author wrote under the guidance of
divine inspiration, or was in any way or degree super
naturally secured against error. I state this as the
unavoidable conclusion from the detailed examination
which, in the course of these Lectures, has been made
of the history and contents of those books. Like
the histories of many ancient nations, they abound,
particularly the most ancient of them, in improba
bilities, trivialities, and contradictions. On the same
principles upon which we estimate other writings of
their class, we recognize them all as having some basis
of truth. But as to the many things, incredible and
objectionable on many accounts, which have been built
upon that basis, neither Judaism nor Christianity is
any more responsible for them, than Christianity is re
sponsible for the popular marvels of the Middle Ages,
or the thousand legends of the Romish Church. We
may reasonably allow that the Jewish invaders took
the border Canaanitish city of Jericho, without sup
posing that its walls fell down before a blast of their
trumpets. We may reasonably believe that King David
had been an officer of King Saul, though the occasion
of his becoming so is related in ways so different as not
to admit of their being reconciled together. We may
suppose that Abijah gained a victory over Jeroboam
three hundred and fifty years before the Captivity, with
out understanding that " there fell down slain of Israel
five hundred thousand chosen men." A history may

PREFACE. Xlll
be more or less trustworthy authority for leading facts,
at the same time that its character in other respects is
such as to put the theory of a supernatural illumina
tion of its author absolutely out of the question.
My view of what are called Prophecies, left on rec
ord by writers subsequent to Moses, is largely ex
pounded in the Lectures on the Later Prophets and
the Hagiographa. The great question in respect to
those compositions is, whether they contain supernat
ural predictions of future events ; because, if they do,
then their authors enjoyed special divine illumination,
and a miraculous commission. In detailed criticisms
on the passages to which that question relates, I have
given the reasons for my opinion that they contain
nothing of the kind.
Whoever has a curiosity to see how the imagina
tion of Jewish Rabbis could run riot in this field, will
do well to look into the second book of Schottgen's
" Horse Hebraicse," where that diligent scholar has
made a collection of Old Testament texts applied by
them to the Messiah. In modern times, the tendency
among judicious Christian critics has been, to limit the
number of texts to be interpreted as descriptive of
Jesus. Grotius, while he did not reject the popular
doctrine on the subject, could find in the Minor
Prophets only two passages susceptible of this appli
cation in their primary sense.* According to Bishop
Chandler, there are twelve passages demanding this
* Haggai ii. 7 et seq. ; Mai. iii. 1 et seq.
VOL. III. b

XIV PREFACE.
construction.* I have given my view of each of them
in its place, as well as of others embraced in the same
class by less considerate critics.
If in any instance my different interpretation of a
passage of this sort does not give satisfaction, what
then 1 My general view of its character, as not con
taining supernatural prediction, is not thereby refuted.
If it' had been given by verbal inspiration for the use
of all ages, then indeed it might be presumed to have
been so constructed as to be capable of being exactly
interpreted by us. If otherwise, then no such thing
is to be presumed. Should a Chaldee or Hebrew poem,
of the period of the Jewish captivity, be now brought
to light, should we be justified in assuming beforehand,
that on examination we should be able to understand
all its allusions 1 If the meaning of a passage eludes
us, or if, in the shape in which it has come down to
us, it appears unsusceptible of a good meaning on the
common principles of interpretation, certainly no in
ference follows of supernatural endowments on the
part of its author. Nothing could be more unreason
able than to assume that he possessed miraculous
prescience, and then to demand that that claim should
be recognized, unless a clear and unquestionable sense,
of a kind consistent with the opposite hypothesis,
could be put upon all that he had written. If I
have asked for proof of alleged miraculous foreknowl-
* They are as follows, viz. : Is. Iii. 13 - liii. 12 ; Dan. ii. 44, 45 ; vii. 13,
14;ix. 24-27; Amosix. 11,12; Mic. v. 2 ; Hab. ii. 3, 4; Hag. ii. 6-9;
Zech. ix. 9 ; xii. 10 ; Mai. iii. 1 ; iv. 5, 6. (See Chandler's " Defence of
Christianity," &c, Chap. II. § 2.)

PREFACE. XV
edge, and made inferences from the want of such
proof, I suppose it will not be denied that this is a
legitimate and conclusive method of reasoning, though
it is not the only method which I have used. I sup
pose it will be allowed on all hands, that the burden
of proof is on him who alleges supernatural agency
to have been exerted in any given case ; and that the
rule, not to introduce supernatural machinery with
out sufficient occasion, will be acknowledged to be
as good for the critic, as the motto on my title-page
declares it to be for the poet.
If the writers who in the ages of the Jewish king
doms spoke of the reign of the expected Messiah mis
understood the language of Moses, so as to build upon
it the imagination of a future Jewish golden age, it
was nothing different from what has been done by
those Christian divines who have extracted the doctrine
of an earthly millennium from the New Testament.
If Jesus and his Apostles have not declared that those
writers were greatly in error as to their conceptions of
the Messiah and his office, neither have they explained
what, on the popular hypothesis, equally demanded
explanation, — how the language of those writers
could be applicable to him. In short, they have not
treated the subject. And, as to his own claim to be a
messenger of God, how can it be doubted that Jesus
gave us more evidence in its behalf by appearing in
a character so different from what those writers de
scribed, than if, by conforming himself to their de
scription, he had seemed to take his hint from them,

XVI PREFACE.
and to be endeavouring to avail himself of an expecta
tion implanted by them in the popular mind ]
As to supposed predictions of events of a different
kind, such as the revolutions of states, and other pub
lic transactions which make the material of history,
the waste and abuse of ingenuity and learning, on the
part of the popular school of interpreters, have been
enormous. " I have never seen a single commentator,"
says Dr. Arnold, " who has not perverted the truth of
history to make it fit the prophecy  Commenta
ries or expositions of the prophecies give me a painful
sense of unfairness in their authors, in straining the
facts to agree with the imagined prediction of them." *
That class of books, of which Bishop Newton on the
Prophecies is an example, are the scandal of sacred lit
erature. They are not to be spoken of by considerate
men except with grief and condemnation; for, well
meant as they doubtless were, they have brought sore
discredit upon revealed religion.
Of the didactic and other works embraced in the
Hagiographa and Apocrypha, from the inestimable
compositions in the Book of Psalms to the Song of
Solomon and the eccentricities of Daniel and Esdras, I
have made a careful survey with the view of ascertain
ing, as to each, the degree of estimation in which it
claims and deserves to be held by a discerning Christian.
If I have been little swayed by current opinion in re
spect to any of them, I trust I have been equally un-
tempted by any weak ambition for novelty of statement.
* " Life and Correspondence," Letter XIV.

PREFACE. XVII
For a reason mentioned in the Preface to the sec
ond volume, the Lectures in the second and third
volumes were not printed in the order in which they
should be read now that the series is complete. The
following is the proper order for the reader ; viz. Lec
tures I. -XXXI., XXXVII. -XLIII., XXXII. -
XXXVI., XLIV. -LXX. Had this arrangement not
been disturbed, the second volume would have con
tained the Lectures on Genesis and the Early Proph
ets, and the third, those on the Later Prophets, the
first and fourth volumes retaining their present form.
In treating of matters connected with the capture
of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and that of Babylon
by the Medes and Persians, I have supposed the cor
rectness of the received chronology of those events.
I believe it to be correct, according to the information
which we have. At all events, it is adopted by the
most esteemed of those critics who urge the common
interpretation of the alleged predictions in Jeremiah
and Daniel. And I do not know that there is any
other, with any show of reason on its side, more favor
able to their argument.
In all the books which have been translated by Dr.
Noyes, I have made my quotations from his version,
which deserves to be in use as the standard version,
wherever the English language is read. I did not
know that he had made alterations in the second edi
tion of his translation of the Psalms till all my com
ments upon that book were in type, and most of the
sheets struck off. This will account for those verbal
b*

XVU1 PREFACE.
differences, not numerous or important, which may be
observed between my quotations and Dr. Noyes's last
edition. In that edition Dr. Noyes has changed his
version of Psalm xiv. 6, for one equivalent to that
which I have proposed to substitute.*
In respect to quotations and references, I have con
stantly adhered to the rule observed in the previous
volumes, never making any without verifying them by
going to the original source, or, in the few instances
in which the book in question was not within my
reach, referring to the writer from whom I took the
statement at second hand. I trust that very few errors
of reference will be found. The inconvenience which
I have experienced from the inaccuracy of others
in this respect has led me to use extreme care ;
and to that end, not trusting to the correctness of
my entries in the manuscript, I have uniformly re
peated the tedious process of verifying with the
proof-sheets. In a note to the Lecture on the Authenticity of the
Pentateuch, I spoke of the Second Book of Esdras as
"a rhapsody by some Christian."! Afterwards, in
treating of the origin of that book, I expressed a dif
ferent opinion. J I had altered my mind in conse
quence of further study. Of course, I cannot be sur
prised if other discrepancies should be detected ; but
I think there will not be any of importance.
In a Lecture on Jeremiah I supposed that no one
* See Vol. IV. p. 314. t Vo1- L P- 8<>> note.
J Vol. IV. p. 124.

PREFACE. XIX
would venture, a literal interpretation of what that
writer says of a seventy years' subjection of Tyre.*
I had forgotten, or had not observed, that Bishop
Newton had tried his ready hand upon it.y
In reaching the conclusion of a work which, amid
various engagements and with much interruption, has
been on my hands more than a score of years, I can
not help seeing cause to be much dissatisfied with its
execution. It would be highly gratifying to me to
have opportunity, in a second edition, to lay it before
the public in a form less unworthy of attention ; but
this is more than I can expect. At the time of the
preparation and publication of the first two volumes,
I was pressed with daily engagements inconsistent
with that kind of attention which was necessary to a
proper finish. The second volume was issued nearly
twelve years ago. I expected to follow it immediately
with the remaining two volumes. But the death of
the publisher with whom an arrangement had been
made to this effect prevented its execution, and I was
not able to renew it in any other quarter. The de
lay has had its advantages and its inconveniences.
In the interval, subjects to which I had given so much
thought of course continued to be upon my mind, to
be looked at in the lights of further consideration and
experience ; and all the reflection which I gave to
them tended to confirm my conviction of the correct-

* Vol. III. p. 342.
f " Dissertation on the Prophecies," Vol. I. pp. 332-334.

XX PREFACE.
ness of the principles on which I had proceeded. On
the other hand, when I resumed the printing, and pro
ceeded to prepare the notes Avhich appeared necessary
for further illustration, it was after a long partial dis
use of the appropriate studies ; and every one, who
has had experience of the kind, knows how, under
such circumstances, trains of thought and facts for ar
gument fade away from the memory, beyond the power
of loose memoranda to recall.
Were it any gratification of the vanity of author
ship that I was aiming at, I should probably even now
suppress these volumes. But, if there are any serious
inquirers who are disturbed by the perplexities which
troubled my own mind when I fell into the trains of
thought here developed, I may prove to have been
rendering them a service; and that will be my suffi
cient reward for an otherwise uncompensated labor.
As to criticism, if my book be thought worthy of it,
I shall welcome it, if friendly. If not friendly, still,
if well founded, I hope I shall rejoice in it, and I
know I shall readily be instructed by it ; for I know
that my aim is the Truth.
" Before thy sacred altar, heavenly Truth !
I bow in age, as erst I bowed in youth.
Still let me bow, till this weak frame decay,
And my last hour be lighted by thy ray ! "
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bee. 31st, 1851.

TABLE

Of the Books in the Order of the English Version, and of
the Lectures in which they are respectively treated.

Genesis,
Exodus,
Leviticus,Numbers,
Deuteronomy,
Joshua,Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel,
2 Samuel,
1 Kings,
2 Kings,
1 Chronicles,
2 Chronicles,
Ezra,
Nehemiah, Esther,
Job,Psalms,Proverbs,Ecclesi.Tst.es, Solomon's Song,
Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Lamentations,Ezekiel, Daniel,Hosea,
Joel,
Amos,Obad i ah,
Jonah,Micah,
Nahum, Habakkuk,

ctun

sb XXI. -XXV.

Vol. II. pp.

tt it

XXV.,V.-X. XI. -XIII.
XIV. -XVII.

5 " "
I Vol. I. "
tt a
It it
a
XVIII. -XX.
XXVI., XXVII.
Vol. II. "
ti
XXVIII., XXIX.
Vol.11
.pp. 184-204,
tt
XXVIII. XXX., XXXI.
Vol. II. pp.
tt a
it
XXXVII., XXXVIII.
Vol. III. "
tt
XXXIX., XL.
XL1.,XL1I.
u tt
it it
ti
LIV.
Vol. IV. "
LV. LVI. n
ii il
ti il
it ti
a
LXIX.
Vol.
IV.
, pp. 456 -465.
tt
n
LX.LXI.-LXIII.
Vol. IV. pp.
it a
n
LXIV. ii
tt a
it
XLIV. -XLVI.
tt tt
Vol. III. "
it
XLVIII. -L.
L.
LI.,LII.
tt it
tt it
ti a
it
LXVI.-LXVIII.Vol.IV.
. pp. 389 -406,
ti
XXXVI.
Vol. II. pp.
tt
It
XXXV.
a a
tt
XLVII.
Vol. III. "
it
LIII.
a a
it
XLVII.
a n
1-122
122-125 91-234
235-310 311-423424-511 134-183
208-235 204-207
236-300 1-43
44- 96
97-146 6-29
30- 66
67- 83
83 - 105
469-473217-254
255-325 331-336
337-343 326-331 171-274
300-393393-395396-463
.411-455 413-430430-435337-412296-299
464-474 275-285
285-288 288-291
XXII

TABLE OF LECTURES.

Zephaniah,

Zechariah,Malachi,

Lecture XLVII.
« LIII.

Vol. III. pp. 291 -296
tt tt 474-477
« " 478-496
" " 496-503

1 Esdras,

Lecture LVII.

Vol. IV. pp. 106 -119

2 Esdras,

u

tt

" " 119-129

Tobit,

tt

LXV.

" 355-365

Judith,

n

tt

" " 367-382

Additions to Esther,

tt
LXIX.
Vol. IV. pp. 465-469, 473 - 475
Wisdom of Solomon,
n
LXIV.
Vol. IV. pp. 350 -354
Ecclesiasticus,
a
11
" " 343-350
Baruch, and Epistle of Jeremiah.
LXVI.
" " 383-389
Song of the Three Children,
tt
LXVI., LXVII.
Vol. IV. pp. 407, 408, 419, 420
Story of Susanna,
tt
a tt
" 406,407, "
Idol Bel and the Dragon,
"
tt a
" " 408-410, "
Prayer of Manasses,
tt
LXV.
Vol.IV.pp.365-367
1 Maccabees,
«
LVIII.
" " 130-177
2 Maccabees,
tt
L1X.
" " 178-216
Lectures not included in the above List.
On the Language of the Old Testament,
On the Canon of the Old Testament,
On the Text of the Old Testament,
On the Authenticity of the Pentateuch,
On the Structure and Character of the Hebrew
Poetry,
On the Allegorical and other Erroneous Melhods
of Interpretation,
On the Object and Character of the Writings
of the Later Prophets,
On the History from the Captivity to the Time
of Antiochus Epiphanes,
On the History of the Later Jewish Kingdom,
Lecture I.
Vol. I.
pp. 1- 19
a
n.
ii
" 20- 42
11
m.
it
" 43- 66
a
IV.
li
" 67- 90
n
XXXII.
Vol. II.
•' 301-331
i ti
XXXIII
li
" 332-361
XXXIV. "
362-386
XLIII. Vol. III. " 147-170
LXX. Vol. IV. " 477-491
CONTENTS

VOLUME THIRD

LECTURE XXXVII.
PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. — 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. j?
David's Treatment of an Amalekite who boasted of having slain the
late King. — His Elegy on Saul and Jonathan. — His Unction as
King of Judah. — Ishbosheth made King of Israel. — War between
the Rival Kingdoms. — Death of Asahel. — Intrigue of Abner with
David. — His Death and Burial. — Death of Ishbosheth. — David's
Treatment of his Murderers. — Unction of David as King of Israel.
— Capture of Jerusalem. — Increase of David's Family. — His Vic
tories over the Philistines. — His Transfer of the Ark to Mount
Zion. — His Proposal to build a Temple. — Divine Promises to his
Race. — His Further Conquests. — His Treatment of Mephibosheth.
— His Subjugation of the Ammonites. — His Adultery and Mar
riage with Bathsheba. — Death of their First-born. — Birth of Sol
omon. — Sack of Rabbah. — Three Things noticeable at this Pe
riod, — The Consolidation of the Kingdom, — The Origin of a
National Literature, — The Origin of the Notion of a Royal
Prophet 
LECTURE XXXVIII.
AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. — 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25.
Crime of Amnon. — His Assassination by Absalom. — Flight and Re
call of Absalom. — His Rebellion. — Flight of David from Jerusa
lem. — Perfidy of Ziba. — Insolence of Shimei. — Intrigues of Hu-
shai. — Suicide of Ahilhophel. — Victory of David's Forces. —
Death of Absalom. — Restoration of David. — Feud between the
Tribes. — Revolt of Sheba. — Its Suppression by Joab. — Hanging
of Saul's Sons and Grandsons. — Their honorable Burial. — Ac
count of four Philistine Giants. — Two Psalms of David. — List
of his thirty-six Champions. — Census of the People. — Punish-

XXIV CONTENTS.
ment of it by a Pestilence. — Sacrifice at the Threshing-floor of
Araunah . — Character of David. — His Claims to the Title of Prophet.
— Description of him as being after God's own Heart. . . .22
LECTURE XXXIX.
THE TIME OF SOLOMON. — 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43.
Period of History to which the Two Books of Kings relate. — Originally
one Book, and probably one with the Books of Samuel. — Time of
the Author. — References to Earlier Writings. — Quotation and Ref
erences in the New Testament. — Solomon associated with his Fa
ther in the Kingdom. — Death of David. — Execution of Adonijah,
Joab, and Shimei. — Marriage of Solomon to an Egyptian Princess.
— His Vision at Gibeon. — His Wise Judgment. — His Purveyor-
ships. — Building of the Temple, and of the Royal Palace. — Con
secration of the Temple. — Wealth and Greatness of Solomon. —
Visit of the Queen of Sheba. — Constructive Idolatries of Solomon.
— Disorders of the Last Part of his Reign. — His Death. . . 44
LECTURE XL.
THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. — 1 KINGS XII. 1.—
XXII. 53.
Condition of Neighboring Nations at this Period. — Date of the Build
ing of the Temple. — Want of Means for determining the Time of
the Origin of the Human Race. — That Event more remote than is
commonly supposed. — Egypt. — Idumaea. — Assyria. — Phrenicia.
— Syria. — Accession of Rehoboam. — Revolt of the Ten Tribes,
and Establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, under Jeroboam. —
Institutions of Worship in the Northern Kingdom. — Messages of
a Prophet, and accompanying Prodigies. — Capture of Jerusalem by
Shishak, King of Egypt. — Death of Jeroboam, and of Rehoboam.
— Reigns of Abijam, Asa, and Jehoshaphat, in Judah ; of Nadab,
Baasha, Elah, Omri, Ahab, Zimri, and Ahaziah, in Israel. — Wars
with Syria. — Progress of Irreligion, especially in Israel. — Prodi
gies related of Elijah and other Prophets. — Visions of Micaiah. . 68
LECTURE XLI.
THE TIME OF ELISHA.— 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25.
Death of Ahaziah. — Last Acts and Translation of Elijah. — Rebellion
of the Moabites. — Miracles of Elisha. — Cure of the Waters of
Jericho. — Destruction of the Children of Bethel . — Supply of Water

CONTENTS. XXV
to the Israelitish Army. — Defeat of the Moabites. — Supply of Oil
to a Widow. — Birth, Death, and Reanimation of her Child. — An
tidote to a Poison. — Creation of Food. — Cure of the Leprosy of
a Syrian. — Detection and Punishment of Gehazi's Fraud. — Recov
ery of an Axe from the Water. — Communication of Intelligence to
the King. — Capture and Dismissal of a Party of Syrians. — Siege
and Famine of Samaria. — Deliverance therefrom. — Prediction to
Hazael. — Revolt of Idumsea. — War with Syria. — Unction of Jehu.
— Fate of Joram, Ahaziah, Jezebel, the Sons of Ahab, the Broth
ers of Ahaziah, and the Priests of Baal. — Death of Jehu. — Usur
pation and Death of Athaliah. — Coronation of Joash. — Adminis
tration of Joash and Jehoiada. — Wars with Syria. — Interview of
Joash with Elisha. — Elisha's Death and Burial. — Resuscitation of
a Dead Body by Contact with his Bones  97
LECTURE XLII.
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. — 2 KINGS XIV. 1.—
XXV. 30.
Reign of Amaziah in Judah. — His Campaign inldumaea. — His Defeat
by Jehoash, and Death. — Reigns of Azariah, Jotham, and Ahaz, in
Judah, and of Jeroboam II. , Zachariah, Shallum, Menahem, Peka-
hiah, Pekah, and Hoshea, in Israel. — Wars of Israel and Syria
against Assyria and Judah. — Idolatries of Ahaz. — Conquest of the
Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians — Transportation of the In
habitants, and Introduction of New Colonists. — Reign of Hezekiah
in Judah. — Assyrian Invasion. — Conference of Hezekiah with
Isaiah. — Destruction of the Assyrian Army. — Sickness and Cure
of Hezekiah. — Retrocession of the Sun. — Embassy from Babylon.
— Idolatries of Manasseh and Amon. — Religious Administration
of Josiah. — Discovery of the Book of the Law. — Renewal of the
National Covenant, and Prosecution of Reforms. — Defeat and Death
of Josiah. — Reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zede
kiah. — Sack of the City and Temple. — Viceroyalty of Gedaliah.
— Promotion of Jehoiachin. — Babylonish Captivity. . . . 124
LECTURE XLIII.
HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO THE ACCESSION OF ANTI
OCHUS EPIPHANES. — B. C. 588-175.
Sources of Information. — Kings of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-
Merodach, Neriglissor, Laborasoarchad, Belshazzar. — Condition of
the Jews under these Monarchs. — Kings of Media, Arbaces, Cyax-
ares, Astyages, Darius. — Conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. — Kings
of Persia, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius Hystaspis, Xerxes I., Arta-
VOL. III. C

XXVI CONTENTS.
xerxes Longimanus, Xerxes II., Sogdianus, Darius Nothus, Arta
xerxes Mnemon, Ochus, Darius Codomanus. — Condition of the
Jews under the Persian Rule. — Greek Conquests. — Victories of
Alexander at the Granicus and at Issus. — Conquests of Syria, Pal
estine, Egypt, Persia, and Babylon. — Death of Alexander at Baby
lon. — Partition of his Empire. — Relations of the Jews to the
Governments of Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. — Their
History between the Age of Alexander and that of Antiochus Epi
phanes arranged under Three unequal Periods. — Succession of
Greek-Egyptian and Greek-Syrian Kings. — Succession of Jewish
High-Priests. — Earliest Relations of the Jews to Rome. — Acces
sion of Antiochus  147
LECTURE XLIV.
ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6.
Age and Personal Notices of Isaiah. — Case of Inscriptions, and other
Notes, prefixed and attached to the Biblical Poems. — Arrangement
of the Poems in their present Order. — Probability of Mistake of
Later Comments for Parts of the Original Writing. — Reasons for
believing that the Collection of Poems, as at present extant, was
not arranged by Isaiah, and that it has suffered Interpolation. —
Question of Authorship of the Respective Parts an Open Question,
not determined by the Title, nor by any New Testament Authority.
— Annotations on the Poem contained in the First Chapter. — In
scription to the Poem comprised in the Second, Third, and Fourth
Chapters, and Remarks thereupon. — Allegory of an Unfruitful
Vineyard, in the Fifth Chapter. — Vision of God in the Sixth. —
Introduction to the Seventh Chapter. — Isaiah's Interview with Ahaz.
— Denunciations and Promises in the Eighth Chapter, with Refer
ence to the expected Princely Messiah. — Rebuke of the Northern
Kingdom in the Ninth Chapter, with Threats of an Assyrian Inva
sion. — Hymn of Triumph over the Discomfiture of the Assyrian
Army, in the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Chapters, with a Pros
pect of the Universal Reign of the Messiah, and of Greatness, Fe
licity, and Undisturbed Peace for Israel and Judah. . . . 171

LECTURE XLV.
ISAIAH XIII. 1.— XXXIX. 8.
Supposed Prophecy of the Capture of Babylon by the Medes and Per
sians under Cyrus. — Question concerning the Authorship of the
Poem. — Antiquity of the Empires mentioned. — True Interpreta
tion of the Passage. — Denunciations of Calamity against the As-

CONTENTS. XXVII
Syrians, Philistines, and Moabites. — War with Israel and Syria,
and Alliance with the Assyrians. — Assyrian Invasion and Defeat.
— Revolutions in Egypt. — Warnings against an Alliance with that
Kingdom. — Invasion of the " Desert of the Sea," or Babylon. —
Questions concerning the Authenticity and Meaning of the Passage.
— Fragments relating to Idumaea and Arabia. — Peril and Rescue
of the " Valley of Vision," or Jerusalem. — Denunciations against
Tyre. — Common Interpretation of the Passage. — Deficiency in the
Historical Evidence of the Supposed Capture of Tyre by Nebuchad
nezzar. — Captivity of the People of the Northern Kingdom. — Ex
postulations against the Blindness of the Jews. — Further Protest
against an Egyptian Alliance, and Exhortations to seek Security in
Reliance on Jehovah. — Future Virtue and Prosperity of the People.
— Triumph over the Discomfiture of the Assyrian Army. — Calam
ities of the Edomites, and Glory of God's Chosen People. — His
torical Passage identical with one in the Second Book of Kings, and
embracing two Poems. ........ 199
LECTURE XLVI.
ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24.
Question respecting the Authorship of this Passage. — No External
Evidence referring it to Isaiah. — Internal Evidence indicating a dif
ferent Author. — Analysis of its Contents. — Purpose of Jehovah
to restore and defend Israel. — His Greatness and Wisdom. — Cyrus
commissioned to be his Instrument for his People's Redemption. —
The Overthrow of the Babylonish Idolatry and Empire. — Past and
Present Dealings of Jehovah with his People. — Remonstrances and
Encouragements. — Present Humiliation and Future Greatness of
the Messiah. — Prosperity of the People under his Government. —
Extension of their Faith and Immunities to the Gentiles. — Rebuke
of Prevailing Impieties and Hypocrisy. — Delay of Promised Bless
ings on their Account. — Descriptions of the approaching Power and
Glory of the Nation. — The Messiah's Bloody Victories in Idumaea.
— Thanksgiving for Past Mercies, and Prayer for Future. — Jeho
vah's Reply. — Promise of a great Moral Revolution, and an Equi
table Retribution to the Wicked and the Good. — Quotations from
the Book in the New Testament.  235

LECTURE XLVII.
MICAH, NAHUM, HABAKKUK, ZEPHANIAH, AND OBADIAH.
Birthplace and Age of Micah. — His Prophecies addressed to both
Kingdoms. — Threefold Division of the Book. — Threats and Prom-

XXVIII CONTENTS.
ises in the First Division. — Rebukes of Rulers and Teachers in the
Second, with a Prospect of Future Reformation and Restoration. —
Remarks on Two Passages, commonly interpreted as Supernatural
Predictions. — Jehovah represented in the Third Division as speak
ing to the Earth and the Mountains. — Remonstrances, Rebukes,
and Consolations. — Character of Micah's Style of Thought and
Composition. — Birthplace and Age of Nahum. — Character and
General Plan of his Book. — Threats against Modern Nineveh, of
a Fate similar to that of the Ancient City, in Retribution of her Sins,
and especially of her Cruelties to the Chosen People. — Age and
Contents of the Book of Habakkuk. — Its Subject, the Conquests
and Final Overthrow of the Chaldees. — Its Form, a Dialogue, in
the First Two Chapters, between the Prophet and Jehovah, and in
the Third, an Ode, afterwards adapted to the Synagogue Service.
— Age and Parentage of Zephaniah. — His Genius and Style. —
Division of his Book into Three Parts. — Threats against the Jews
and against their Enemies, and Prospect of the Future Glory and
Prosperity of Israel. — Age of Obadiah. — Question respecting a
Passage common to him and Jeremiah. — Subject of his Prophecy,
the destined Downfall of Edom  275

LECTURE XLVIII.
JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10.
Title of the Book. — Parentage and Birthplace of Jeremiah. — Age of
his Writings that of the Conflicts between Babylon and Egypt, in
which Judea was exposed to Inroads from both. — General Topics
of the Book, Rebukes of National Sins, Menaces of Public Disas
ter, and Prospects of Ultimate Prosperity and Greatness. — Fre
quency of Prose Explanations of the Occasions and Subjects of the
Poems. — Jeremiah placed First of the Later Prophets in the Order
of the Talmud. — State of the Text. — Violation of Chronological
Sequence. — Difference between the Arrangement of the Hebrew
and that of the Septuagint. — Other Differences between these Text
ual Authorities. — Analysis of the Contents of the First Nine Chap
ters. — Summary of the Contents of the next following Fifteen
Chapters  300
LECTURE XLIX.
JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19.
Knowledge of the Future, Proof of a Divine Communication. — Na
ture of the Evidence requisite to prove Supernatural Foreknowl
edge. — Most Plausible Argument for the Supernatural Foreknowl-

CONTENTS. XXIX
edge of the Prophets, derived from the Writings of Jeremiah. —
Uncertainty of the Text of his Writings. — Prediction of a Seventy
Years' Captivity. — Explanations of Jeremiah's Designation of that
Length of Time. — Inquiry whether the Historical Facts sustain the
Literal Interpretation of the Supposed Prediction. — Peculiar Un
certainty of the Text in the Passage relating to the Length of the
Captivity. — Other Nations threatened with a Captivity of the Same
Duration. — Presentation of a Cup and of Yokes to Numerous
Kings. — Repetition of Counsels, Threats, and Promises to the
Jews. — Proclamation by Jeremiah in the Temple, and Danger in
curred thereby. — His Warnings to Zedekiah and several Neigh
bouring Kings. — His Conference with Hananiah. — His Letter to
his Countrymen in Captivity — His Assurances to the Exiled Peo
ple of both Kingdoms of a Happy Reestablishment in their own
Country. — His Purchase of a Parcel of Land. — Renewed Promises
of a Restoration of the Kingdoms, of the Royalty of David's Family,
and of the Levitical Priesthood and Ritual. — His Conversation with
the King. — Threats of Destruction to the Jews, for refusing to
manumit their Slaves. — His Hospitality to certain Rechabites, and
Moral drawn by him from their Account of the Habits of their
Family  335
LECTURE L.
RESIDUE OF JEREMIAH'S PROPHECIES, AND LAMENTATIONS.
Historical Miscellany, extending through Ten Chapters. — Transac
tions relating to a Collection of Jeremiah's Writings. — Two Ac
counts of his Imprisonment and Discharge. — His Treatment by
Nebuchadnezzar's Officers. — Transactions among the People left
in Judea, terminating in their Retirement into Egypt. — Jeremiah's
Forebodings of Evil to his Countrymen and the Egyptians. — Idol
atries of the Jews in Egypt. — Conference between the Prophet and
Baruch. — Rebukes and Threats addressed to the Egyptians, the
Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Per
sians, the Syrians, " The Kingdoms of Hazor," and the Chaldees.
— Promises of Future Restoration to Israel, Judah, Egypt, Moab,
Ammon, and Persia. — The Last Chapter a Copy of the Conclud
ing Passage of the Second Book of Kings. — Number of Captives
carried to Babylon, only Four or Five Thousand. — Alleged Pre
dictions of the Messiah. — Division of Passages supposed to contain
other Predictions into Four Classes. — 1. Those referring to a Past
Event. — 2. Those referring to a Future Event, capable of being
anticipated by Natural Foresight. — 3. Those apparently referring
to the Future, but not known to have been ever fulfilled. — 4. Those
which, if interpreted as Literal Declarations concerning the Future,
were contradicted by the Subsequent Event. — Book of Lamenta-

XXX CONTENTS.
tions, consisting of Five Elegiac Poems, the First Four being in
the Acrostic Form. — Their Subject, the Devastation of Judea by
the Chaldees. — Quotations from Jeremiah in the New Testament. 367

LECTURE LI.
EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27.
Personal Notices of the Prophet. — General Statement of Subjects
treated in his Writings. — Their Obscurity. — His Vision by the
River Chaboras, resulting in a Commission to rebuke the People. —
Renewal of the Commission, and Temporary Dispensation from it.
— Imagery significant of the Overthrow of the Two Kingdoms. —
Distribution of the People into Three Parts, for Destruction in Three
Different Ways. — Threats and Reproaches in the Usual Form. — •
Visionary Transportation to the Temple at Jerusalem, and Contem
plation of the Abominations there practised, and of the Retribution
appointed for them. — Repetition at Jerusalem of the Vision before
seen in Chaldea. — Rebukes of certain Distinguished Criminals. —
Supposed Prediction of the Fate of Zedekiah. — Prognostications
of Speedy Divine Vengeance. — Invectives against False Teachers.
— Vindication of both the Severity and the Lenity of Jehovah. —
Comparison of the Disloyal Nation to a Faithless Wife. — Illustra
tions of the Fortunes of the last two Kings under the Figures of a
Cedar of Lebanon and a Vine. — Statement of the Doctrine of In
dividual Responsibleness. — Retrospects of National Delinquencies
and Disasters. — Repetitions of Menaces, with Particular Reference
to the Chaldee Invasion. — Repetition of the Comparison of Israel
and Judah to Unchaste Wives. — Movement of the Babylonian Ar
mies. — Death of Ezekiel's Wife, and his Abstinence from Mourn
ing therefor  396

LECTURE LII.
EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35.
Denunciations against the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, and
the Philistines. — Threatened Ruin of Tyre, with Descriptions of its
Ancient Greatness. — Conquest of Egypt and its Auxiliary Nations,
and its Desolation for Forty Years. — The same Subject pursued in
Three peculiarly Ornate Compositions. — Responsibility of Watch
men, and of those whom they warn. — Doctrine of Pardon to the
Penitent, and Retribution to the Backsliding. — Intelligence of the
Capture of Jerusalem. — Reflections and Lamentations of the Proph
et, and Forebodings of Further Disaster. — Rebuke of Unfaithful
Shepherds, and Augury of the Future Shepherd of David's Line

CONTENTS. XXXI
and Name. — Repetition of Imprecations against Idumaea. — Re
sumption of the Subject of the Future Prosperity of Israel. — The
same Idea, under the Figurative Representations of Dry Bones re
vivified, and of Two Staves united. — Plot and Overthrow of Gog
and Magog. — Detailed Description, in the Form of a Vision, of
the Condition of the Restored Jewish People. — Bearing of the Pas
sage on the Principles of Interpretation of the Prophetical Writings.
— Future Arrangements of the Temple and Ritual. — Position of
the Capital City. — Estates of the Monarch, the Priests, and the
Levites. — Boundaries of the Tribes. — Character of Ezekiel's Writ
ings. — No Quotations from them in the New Testament. — Sup
posed Predictions of Jesus  433
LECTURE LIII.
JONAH, HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, AND MALACHI.
Jonah an Historical Character. — Idioms and Date of the Book called
by his Name. — Difficulty of interpreting it as History. — Outline
of the Narration'. — Inappropriate Prayer, consisting of Sentences
from the Psalms. — Fictitious Narrative among the Jews. — Nature
of the Parable. — Intended Moral of the Story of Jonah. — Refer
ence to it in a Discourse of Jesus. — Not quoted in the New Testa
ment. — Time of Haggai. — Division of his Book into Four Parts,
containing Three Exhortations in Relation to the Rebuilding of the
Temple, and a Promise of the Favor of Jehovah to Zerubbabel. —
Quotation in the New Testament. — Authenticity and Contents of
the First Eight Chapters of Zechariah. — Exhortation to Repent
ance. — Visions, — of Horses, — of Smiths, — of a Man with a
Measuring-Line, — of the High-Priest, the Angel, and the Adver
sary, — of a Candlestick and Olive-Trees, — of a Flying Roll, — of
a Woman and an Ephah Measure, — and of Four Chariots. — Prep
aration of a Crown for the High-Priest. — Nature and Rewards of
Acceptable Obedience. — Time of the Composition of the Last Six
Chapters. — Their Subject, Anticipations of Future National Ca
lamities, Repentance, and Exaltation. — Quotations in the New
Testament. — Supposed Predictions of Jesus. — Age of Malachi. —
Contents of his Book. — Rebukes of Popular Discontents, — of Prof
anation of Sacred Rites, — of Illegal Marriages. — Approaching
Chastisement, Reformation, and Restored Prosperity. — Application
of the Principles of a Righteous Retribution. — Quotations in the
New Testament. — Supposed Predictions of Jesus. . . . 464

ERRATA.
age 110,
line 21, for empty,
read deserted.
tt
124,
tt
4, «
Conquest of,
a
Campaign in.
it
124,
"
18, "
Jehoiakim, and,
tt
Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and.
tt
127,
tt
17, "
he inflicted,
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Menahem inflicted.
"
135,
a
37, "
rats,
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mice.
a
150,
it
4, "
in the year 540 B
C.
a
(in the year 539 B. C.)
tt
207,
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Uzziah,
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Ahaz.
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reigns,
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reign.
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538,
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539.
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people, henceforward,
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people to the city, henceforward
it
268,
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forsaken city,
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forsaken.
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289,
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he would,
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Jehovah would.
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292,
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5, "
he could,
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Josiah could.
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Zephaniah is said.
"
303,
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larger prophets,
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largerbooks of the Later Prophets
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448,
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verses,
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verses relating to Iduma?a.
LECTURES

JEWISH SCRIPTURES AND ANTIQUITIES.

LECTURE XXXVII.
PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID.
2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31.
David's Treatment of an Amalekite who boasted of having slain
the late King. — His Elegy on Saul and Jonathan. — His Unc
tion as King of Judah. — Ishbosheth made King of Israel. —
War between the Rival Kingdoms. — Death of Asahel. — In
trigue of Abner with David. — His Death and Burial. — Death
of Ishbosheth. — David's Treatment of his Murderers. — Unc
tion of David as King of Israel. — Capture of Jerusalem. —
Increase of David's Family. — His Victories over the Philis
tines. — His Transfer of the Ark to Mount Zion. — His Pro
posal to build a Temple. — Divine Promises to his Race. —
His Further Conquests. — His Treatment of Mephibosheth. —
His Subjugation of the Ammonites. — His Adultery and Mar
riage with Bathsheba. — Death of their First-born. — Birth
of Solomon. — Sack of Rabbah. — Three Things noticeable at
this Period. — The Consolidation of the Kingdom. — The Origin
of a National Literature. — The Origin of the Notion of a
Royal Prophet.
The first twelve chapters of the Second Book of
Samuel, embracing a period of twenty-four years, re
late to the prosperous portion of the reign of Da
vid. They describe the vigor and magnanimity with
which he won and exercised the royal dignity, and
the success with which he maintained it.
vol. in. 1

2 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. [LECT.
His generosity, or his policy, or both, forbade him
to manifest any satisfaction at the fall of his master
and father-in-law. He had been but three days re
turned to his Philistine home at Ziklag from the
inroad into the country of the Amalekites, when one
of that vagabond race, thinking to pay court to him
with intelligence so auspicious to his future great
ness, approached him with tidings of the disaster of
Gilboa, and, presenting the royal diadem and brace
let, declared that it was by his hand, though at
Saul's own request, that the monarch had met his
fate. David expressed the greatest horror and in
dignation at the Amalekite's presumption in stretch
ing forth his hand, " to destroy the Lord's anointed,"
and ordered an attendant to put him instantly to
death. His character for elevation of mind was in
creased, when he composed a pathetic elegy on the
death of the monarch and his son, and directed it
to be taught, with an accompaniment of music, to
the people of his own tribe, sufferers so long from
the jealous ambition of the tribe of Saul.*
* 2 Sam. i. 1-27. — "So I stood upon him," &c. (10) ; this account
of the manner of Saul's death does not agree with that in 1 Sam. xxxi.
4, 5. It was a falsehood of the Amalekite, say the commentators, who
think it necessary to preserve the credit of the writer by reconciling dis
crepancies. But the Amalekite is said (10) to have really had the crown
and bracelet of Saul. — " Also he bade them teach the children of Judah
he use of the bow" (18); a version worthy of our translators. nK'D.
means bow, and we are to understand here, "this song of the bow." See
Gesen. Lex. ad verb., and comp. i. 22. — "It is written in the book of
Jasher" (ibid.); comp. Vol. II. p. 159, note. — The following version by
Geddes of the elegy in 19-27 better represents the spirit of the original : 
" O Antelope of Israel !
Pierced on thine own mountains !
Ah ! how have fallen the brave !
" Tell it not in Gath ;
Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon ;
Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice !
Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult!

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 3
The fall of the monarch made way for the return
of David to his country, and the prosecution of his
designs upon the throne. By Divine direction, it is
said, he established himself with his family and ad
herents in Hebron, the chief city of the southern
region of Palestine. " And the men of Judah came,
and there they anointed David king over the house of
Judah." Meantime Abner, the cousin of Saul, and
the chief military commander under him during his
lifetime, had taken Ishbosheth, son of Saul, a man
now forty years of age, and, conducting him to a place
called Mahanaim, on the eastern side of the Jordan,
had proclaimed him king in his father's stead. The
forces of David, commanded by Joab, son of Zeruiah,
David's sister, met the invading army of Abner at
" Ye mountains of Gilboa !
On you be neither dew nor rain,
Nor fields affording oblations ;
Since there hath been vilely cast away
The shield of the brave ! the shield of Saul !
The armour* of the anointed with oil !
From the blood of the bold,
From the havoc of the brave,
The bow of Jonathan was never held back,
The sword of Saul never returned in vain.
" Saul and Jonathan !
Linked, in their lifetime, by mutual love,
At their death they were not disunited.
" They were swifter than eagles;
They were stronger than lions.
" Ye daughters of Israel ! weep over Saul,
Who clothed you in delightful scarlet,
Who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
" Ah ! how have fallen the brave,
In the midst of the battle !
" O Jonathan ! pierced on thine own mountains !
I am in distress for thee, my brother Jonathan !
Very dear to me wast thou ;
To me thy love was wonderful ;
Surpassing the love of woman!
" Ah! how have fallen the brave !
How perished the weapons of war ! "
* This good sense is obtained by Geddes, by the conjectural emendation of a letter, vyj for

4 2 SAMUEL I. 1.— XII. 31. [LEGT.
Gibeon, near the border of Judah. Here, after a
preliminary engagement of twelve champions on each
side, all of whom fell in the combat, a battle took
place in which the party of Ishbosheth was defeated,
though with the death of Asahel, another of David's
nephews, slain by the adverse commander in his
flight. The fall of Asahel checked the eagerness of
pursuit, and a parley between the hostile leaders
ended in a sort of truce. Meantime, seeking his ends
by means of conciliation as well as of energy, David
had sent a message to the people of Jabesh-gilead,
to commend them on his part for their fidelity to the
deceased monarch, and to invite them to ratify the
choice which the tribes of Judah had made of a suc
cessor to the throne.*

* 2 Sam. ii. 1-32. — "David inquired of the Lord" (1); see Vol. II. p.
284, note. — "Ishbosheth"; nu/3~Wit, the man of shame (8); one can
not but conjecture that this is a fictitious name, significant of the character
and fate of the unfortunate prince, and attached to him by tradition between
the time of the period recorded and the time of the writer. — " Over the
Ashurites" '"Utt'Srrbx, over the Assyrians (9); is this, as some of the
commentators conjecture, a corrupt reading for 11tt'X~l7X, the Asherites, or
did the author, writing at so distant an age, suppose that the ancient do
minion of Israel had included the Assyrian empire? No ancient version
favors the conjecture, except the Chaldee. — " They caught every one his
fellow by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side ; so they fell
down together" (16); the commentators, who feel bound to vindicate these
books as documents of accurate history, are perplexed by the legendary
character of this account ; but the Hebrew words are plain, and they mean
nothing less than that the twenty-four champions all perished by each others'
hands. — "Abner said again to Asahel, 'Turn thee aside,'" &c. (22);
Abner was unwilling to close the door of reconciliation between himself
and Joab, whose power and vindictive character he well knew, and whose
good offices with the king he might hereafter wish to secure. — " The fifth
rib " (23) ; rather, the abdomen. — " Unless thou hadst spoken," &c. (27) ;
I see no reason here for conjectural emendation of the text ; I under
stand the words to mean , Even if thou hadst not thus spoken to me. " Even
if thou hadst not made this appeal, it was already my purpose to discontinue
the pursuit ; relenting thoughts had possessed themselves of my bosom, as
soon as of thine own."

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 5
In the course of the war which followed, the advan
tage was on the side of David. He " waxed stronger
and stronger, and the house of Saul waxed weaker
and weaker." The prospects of Ishbosheth were still
further clouded, when, on a sudden disgust, Abner,
the main stay of his party, threatened to transfer the
kingdom, and proceeded to tamper with the elders
of Benjamin, and of the other tribes attached to
Ishbosheth, to effect that object. An overture from
Abner was favorably received by the king of Judah.
A scheme was laid for an interview. David solicited
from Ishbosheth the restoration of Michal, his wife
and Ishbosheth's sister, now betrothed to another
husband. The rank of the princess required an il
lustrious attendance ; and, under pretence of conduct
ing her to the court of David, Abner obtained a
conference with the monarch, in which his project of
treachery to his own master was consummated.
He had but lately departed, when Joab, returning
from a marauding expedition, was informed of the
transaction. With a courtier's wakeful jealousy, he
feared lest such services as Abner was proposing might
supplant him in the favor of his prince. He whis
pered suspicions of perfidy on the part of his rival
in his master's ear, and then, inveigling Abner back
to Hebron, put him privately to death, giving out that
the slaying of his brother Asahel by Abner's hand
was the cause of his resentment. The historian is
very careful to represent that David was not privy
to the crime, and that he cleared himself from all
participation in it by cursing Joab and his father's
house; by complaining of the outrageous presump
tion of the sons of Zeruiah ; by directing a mag
nificent funeral for Abner at his own capital, and
himself following the bier, weeping at the grave, and
1*

6 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. (LECT.
fasting till the sun went down. Such ostentatious
sorrow for the death of one, who, as far as the pub
lic knew, was still his enemy, admits of different in
terpretations. Whether suspicions, well or ill found
ed, were abroad of a treacherous connivance with
Joab on the part of David, which it was necessary to
check, lest they should estrange from his cause the
friends of Abner in the rival kingdom ; whether the
display of a magnanimous sorrow at the fate of a
powerful enemy was one of David's arts for securing
the admiration of the people ; or whether the emotion
was as sincere as it was showily expressed, are ques
tions respecting which the writer of the history pos
sessed as little knowledge as ourselves. They were
secrets of David's own court and bosom. At all
events, " all the people took notice of it, and it
pleased them; as whatsoever the king did pleased
all the people ; for all the people and all Israel un
derstood that day, that it was not of the king to slay
Abner, the son of Ner." *
* 2 Sam. iii. 1-39. — Of the mothers of David's six sons, mentioned
in 2 - 5, only the two first-named had come to Hebron with him ; comp. ii. 2.
— " Ishbosheth said unto Abner, wherefore hast thou gone in unto my fa
ther's concubine? " (7). Strange as it may seem, the proceeding with which
Abner was charged seems to have been interpreted in those days as a pre-r
tension to the throne, or constructive high treason; comp. xvi. 21, 22; 2
Kings i. 21-24. — "Deliver me my wife Michal" (14); independently
of his affection for his wife, David advanced his political objects by remind
ing the subjects of Saul's son that he himself was Saul's son-in-law. —
"The Lord hath spoken of David, saying, By the hand of my servant
David I will save my people Israel out of the hand of the Philistines"
(18) ; the Philistines had lately invaded Israel with an immense army, and
gained a decisive victory at Gilboa ; the divided state of the Jewish nation
now gave them every advantage for a prosecution of the war ; yet we are
told of no further movements on their part. Nothing can better show the
incomplete materials and imperfect character of the history. — " The king
lamented over Abner, and said, Died Abner as a fool dieth?" &c. (33,
34) ; the writer here appears to have preserved a few lines of an elegy
reported to have been composed by David on the occasion of Abner's death.

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 7
The death of Abner, whose treachery is repre
sented as having remained undiscovered by his master,
broke down the courage of Ishbosheth, and the union
and fidelity of his people. He was assassinated by
two of his officers, who, hoping to pay acceptable
court by their crime, brought his head to his rival
at Hebron. Either the character or the policy of
David, however, forbade him to seem to approve the
act which opened the way for him to an undis
puted sway. He gave to the discrowned head an
honorable burial by the remains of Abner, and treat
ed the murderers as he had done the Amalekite who
boasted of being the slayer of Saul. There remained
of Saul's family only one male, a son of Jonathan,
named Mephibosheth, who, a child at the time of the
rout of Gilboa, had, in the hurry of the flight, been
dropped by his attendant, and lamed for life by the
fall* All obstacles were now removed to the consumma
tion to which clear indications of public advantage,
and the able and popular character of David, had been
leading ; and the northern tribes came to Hebron, and
* 2 Sam. iv. 1-12. — " Beeroth also was reckoned to Benjamin " (2) ;
Beeroth means the wells; Dr. Robinson (" Biblical Researches," &c, Vol.
II. p. 132) places it at nine miles' distance from Jerusalem. — "And the
Beerothites fled," &c. (3); what this means, I do not know, unless the
writer meant to say that the original inhabitants of the place, when they were
dispossessed of it by the Benjamites, had retired to another place, named Git-
taim, within the same district. Gittaim means the two wine-presses. The
word occurs only in one other passage of the Old Testament, viz. Nehemiah
xi. 33, where the place is mentioned with others in the tribe of Benjamin. —
" Jonathan, Saul's son, had a son that was lame of his feet," &c. (4) ; the
introduction of this verse in this place is an example of the disjointed state
of the narrative. — "Tidings came  out of Jezreel " (ibid.); the
site of the Philistine camp before the battle of Gilboa; comp. 1 Sam. xxix,
1. — " His was name Mephibosheth " (ibid.) ; the composition of this name
is similar to that of Ishbosheth, and calls for a like remark to that made
above in the note on ii. 8.

8 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. [LECT.
professed allegiance to the monarch of Judah. His
reign began under all favorable circumstances. Union
was manifestly the policy of the tribes. The misfor
tunes of the house of Saul had left no rival preten
der to the throne. Judah, the most populous and
powerful member of the confederation, had eminent
claims to precedence in providing for the vacant
sovereignty ; and the individual in whose person she
proposed to assume it had by his personal merit and
conspicuous services fixed the favorable attention of
the whole people. As an officer of Saul, his youth
had been marked by signal exploits against the com
mon enemy; report told of the magnanimity of his
treatment of his unhappy master, and of his severity
against wrong-doers to Saul and to his house; his
seven years' administration. of the government of only
his own tribe had been marked equally by vigor, and
by a prudent and conciliatory spirit ; the friendly re
lations he had borne to the revered Samuel were an
other pledge of his worth, and recommendation to the
public favor ; and possibly the accounts of a Divine
designation of him to the regal office, which after
wards took their place in his history, may have be
gun to have some currency at that early time.
While king of Judah alone, David's residence had
been at the principal city of that tribe, near the south
ern border of the country. In his new relation to
the whole people, it was fit that his court should
have a more central seat ; and the important city of
Jerusalem, — adding to its eminent natural advantages
for access, residence, embellishment, and defence, the
recommendation of standing on the boundary line
between the territory of the tribe of Judah, to which
David belonged, and that of Benjamin, the race which
it was especially needful for him to conciliate,  was

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 9
fixed on as the future capital of the nation. It was
possessed in whole or in part by a remnant of the
ancient Canaanites, called Jebusites, from the ancient
name of the city. David took by assault its strong
hold, on Mount Zion, the principal of the four hills,
which, with the valleys between, constituted' the area
of the city. With the help of materials and work
men sent to him by the friendly king of Tyre, he
built a palace upon this eminence, and gave it the
name of the city of David. His affairs, public and
private, prospered ; Providence smiled ; " the Lord
God of hosts was with him"; children were multi
plied in his house ; and his popularity was increased,
and his throne confirmed, by two signal victories at
Baal-perazim and Rephaim over the Philistine hosts.*
To establish the national worship in fit state was
one of the first objects of David's solicitude. The
ark, since its return from the Philistine captivity, had
* 2 Sam. v. 1-25, — " Then came allthetribes of Israel to David" (1);
" So all the elders of Israel came to the king " (3) ; in these texts see a con
firmation of the view presented in Vol. I. p. 165. — " The king and his men
went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land " (6) ; comp.
Joshua xv. 63 ; xviii. 28 ; Judges i. 8, 21 ; xix. 10 ; 1 Sam. xvii. 54 ; and
observe how uncertain were the accounts which had come down respecting
the condition of the city before the time of David. — " The blind and the lame
shall not come into the house," &c. (8) ; a proverbial form of expression
current in the writer's day, and explained by him as originating in an incident
of David's capture of Zion. To us, the proverb and the explanation are equal
ly a riddle. The ancient versions have tortured the passage in vain to extort
a sense. — " Hiram, king of Tyre,  sent carpenters and masons"
(11) ; the Jews were never expert in the mechanical arts ; comp. Vol. 1. p.
163. — " The valley of Rephaim " (18) ; a well-known tract close to Jeru
salem. In Joshua (xv. 8 ; xviii. 16) our translators render the word into
English as " the valley of the giants." — " David came to Baal-perazim"
(20) ; a place which must have been in or near the valley of Rephaim, but
of which we know nothing beyond what is here related. — " From Geba
until thou come to Gazer" (25). Geba appears to have been on the north
ern border of Judah; comp. 2 Kings xxiii. 8. Gazer is the same as
Gaza, the Philistine city, near the southwest corner of the territory of
that tribe.

10 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. [LECT.
remained twenty years at the house of Abinadab at
Kirjath-jearim. With a magnificent attendance of " all
the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand," David
proceeded to that place to convoy it, with meet rever
ence, to the capital. Its progress was arrested by the
alarm of the monarch at the Divine vengeance in
flicted on one of its attendants for daring to steady
it, when shaken on the road, with a touch of his un
holy hand ; and for three months more it was permit
ted to remain at the dwelling of Obed-edom of Gath.
Informed of the prosperity which its presence had
brought to that family, David was encouraged to
resume his design. His appearance, as he entered
his capital, dancing before the ark in a common min
strel's attire, to win for it the greater .respect in the
eyes of his people, led to some comment on the part
of his wife Michal, Saul's daughter, which provoked
her banishment from his bed. " They brought in the
ark of the Lord, and set it in his place, in the midst
of the tabernacle that David had pitched for it, and
David offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings be
fore the Lord," increasing the popular effect of the
whole proceeding by the distribution of a magnificent
largess " among the whole multitude of Israel, as
well to the women as men." And, with some inter
ruptions, from that time till the destruction of the
city and temple by Titus, more than a thousand years,
Jerusalem was the seat of a splendid worship of the
One True God*
When " the Lord had given him rest round about

* 2 Sam. vi. 1-23.— For "from Baale of Judah" (2), read lo Baale
of Judah. Baalah is said to have been another name for Kirjath-jearim ;
comp. 1 Chron. xiii. 6. — "The house of Abinadab that was in Gibeah"
(3) ; the original is the same as that rendered by our translators in 1 Sam.
vii. 1, " the house of Abinadab in the hill."

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 11
from all his enemies," David meditated to show his
gratitude by providing a fit receptacle for the symbol
of the presence of the Divine Majesty. He deemed
it unbecoming that he should- himself dwell in a
ceiled palace, and " the ark of God within curtains."
He made known his plan to a confidential courtier,
the prophet Nathan, who at first advised him to
prosecute it,»but subsequently told him that he had
been assured in a vision, that the Divine favor should
still attend David and his people, but that the im
portant work of the erection of a temple was not to
be executed by him, being reserved to signalize the
reign of an illustrious son of his, whose throne God
was purposed to establish for ever, though he would
not escape chastisement, should he deserve it by trans
gression. The writer goes on to recite a prayer, said
to have been offered by David at the tabernacle on
this occasion. It is in a style resembling that of
his Psalms, and is very probably an authentic com
position of the monarch. Indeed, the lyric not im
probably gave rise to the narrative with which it is
here introduced. I shall recur, before the close of
this lecture, to the important subject presented in
this passage.*
From this period David went on for a time in an
uninterrupted career of triumphs, extending the na
tional territory widely by conquests over the Syrians
at the north, the Ammonites and Moabites at the east,
the Amalekites and Edomites at the south, and the
Philistines along the coast. He exercised in these
wars the usual severities towards defeated enemies ;
and the spoils and tribute of " vessels of silver, and
vessels of gold, and vessels of brass," he dedicated
* 2 Sam. vii. 1-29. — " Nathan the prophet" (2). See Vol. n. pp.
368-371.

12 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. [LECT.
at the tabernacle of Jehovah in his capital. The
able subordinates of David in the different depart
ments of military and civil administration are natu
rally thought worthy by the writer of being com
memorated by name.*
On inquiry for survivors of the race of Saul, David
was informed that Mephibosheth, a son of Jonathan,
a cripple in consequence of an accident which has

* 2 Sam. viii. 1 - 18. — " Metheg-ammah " (1). No- such place is else
where mentioned. Gesenius renders it the bridle of the metropolis; i. e.
David subdued the Philistine capital city. — " Measured them with a line "
&c. (2) ; that is, he doomed two thirds of his prisoners to death, and
made the selection by the compendious method of measuring off" their ranks
in this proportion with a cord, as they lay prostrate on the ground. — " As
he went to recover his border at the river Euphrates " (3) ; that is, to re
conquer that eastern region of Syria which had fallen under the arms of
Saul; see 1 Sam. xiv. 47. — " David houghed all the chariot-horses," &c.
(4), reserving only a few for purposes of state. See Vol. I. p. 462, note on
Deut. xvii. 16. — "From smiting of the Syrians in the valley of salt,"
DIX (13). The Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic translators read here rj"ix
the Edomites, agreeably to Psalm lx. 1. — " Zadok  and Ahimelech
 were the priests" (17); rather, were priests; there is no article
in the Hebrew. — " The Cherethites and the Pelethites " (18). These two
descriptions of persons are always mentioned together, and appear to have
constituted a sort of royal body-guard. The Cherethites seem to have been
a mercenary corps of Philistines ; comp. 1 Sam. xxx. 14 ; Ezek. xxv. 16 ;
Zeph. ii. 5. Some will have it that they were executioners, from ma
lie cut off, and that Pelethites means couriers, from the obsolete verb nSa
he ran. Others understand by the word simply Philistines, 'nSfl for
'J^ty^S. There is, however, a Peleth mentioned in a Jewish genealogy in
1 Chron. ii. 33 ; comp. Num. xvi. 1. — " David's sons were chief rulers"
(18). It has been questioned whether the word jrl3, commonly rendered
priest, will bear the sense of ruler. But etymologically the sense is a
perfectly natural one, the root JH| meaning simply he was a deputy, or
minister; and for this, and for other reasons, De Wette (" Beytrage zur
Einleitung in das A. T." ss. 81, 82) lays no stress upon the point, though,
if it could have been sustained, the text would have been a material one to
confirm his views of the modern origin of the Pentateuch and the ritual
therein prescribed, since it would go to prove a belief on the writer's part,
that in David's time there had been priests who were not of the stock of
Levi. See also Job xii. 19, where the word Jil3 is properly translated
prince.

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 13
been already mentioned, was living in a distant part
of the country, under the care of one Ziba, a re
tainer of the late royal family. He sent for the
young prince to his court, confirmed to him as a
patrimony all the private property of his grand
father, gave it in charge to Ziba, as the prince's
steward, and ordered that provision should be made
for Mephibosheth in his own palace, the same as
for his own sons. If this was not mere policy, it
is an agreeable incident in the life of David, show
ing his sensibility to the claims of fallen greatness
and the memory of an early friendship. The reader
only wonders that the inquiry had not been made be
fore. To whatever motive attributable, it conduced
to the stability of his throne. It made a favorable im
pression on the people ; and it gave him the custody
and control of the only person who could assert
an hereditary claim to supplant him.*
On the death of a king of the Ammonites, David
sent an embassy of condolence to the heir of the
throne. Imbibing from his courtiers a suspicion,
whether with or without foundation, that the real
object of this movement was the treacherous one
of collecting information for the furtherance of un
friendly designs, the new monarch treated the mes
sengers with gross indignity, and, apprehensive of the
consequences, strengthened himself with a formidable
alliance of his Syrian neighbours. The Israelites,
under Joab and his brother Abishai, fell upon the
confederate army, and obtained a decisive victory.
In a second engagement, terminating in an utter
* 2 Sam. ix. 1-13. — " In Lo-debar " (4). From xvii. 27, it appears
that this place was in the country of Gilead, on the eastern side of the Jor
dan. Apprehensive of the king's purposes, the guardian of Mephibosheth
had thought it prudent to withdraw him to an obscure retirement.
VOL. III. 2

14 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. [LECT.
rout, and the death of the hostile commander, Da
vid effectually broke the Syrian power, and reduced
the nation to subjection.*
The Ammonites, though deprived of the support
of their more powerful ally, still protracted the war,
and Joab was commissioned to lay siege to their
capital city. An incident now occurred, which
changed the hitherto prosperous fortunes of David, and
darkened with shameful crime, and with its calami
tous consequences, the remainder of his days. David
became enamoured of the wife of one of his absent
soldiers, whom from the roof of his palace he saw
in a neighbouring bath, and found means to over
come her easy virtue. In the hope of concealing
his guilt, he sent for Uriah from the camp, as if to
learn from him tidings of the war. Disappointed
in his object, he wrote to Joab to place the soldier
in the foremost post of danger, and there abandon
him to the enemy. The scheme succeeded to his
wish. In an engagement which soon followed, the
Israelites were worsted, Uriah was slain, and his
faithless widow became queen of Israel. The his
tory goes on to relate that the monarch's wicked
ness was duly rebuked by the honest Nathan, who
denounced the heavy retribution with which Divine
justice would visit his polluted house.
The first token of that displeasure soon befell, in the
death of the offspring of the adulterous union. The
father's agony while the blow was impending is repre
sented to have been succeeded by a magnanimously
devout resignation when the bereavement came. A

* 2 Sam. x. 1 - 19. — " His father showed kindness unto me " (2). In
what respects Nahash had shown this kindness, the history does not record ;
but, as the enemy of Saul (1 Sam. xi. 1-11), he may well have favored the
interests of David.

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 15
second son was born, destined to be the illustrious
successor on David's throne. Meantime the war with
the Ammonites proceeded to a victorious close. Joab,
having obtained decisive successes, sent to his master
to come in person to the camp, and reap with his
own hand the ready laurels. "David gathered all
the people together, and went to Eabbah, and fought
against it and took it." He exercised dreadful severi
ties upon the conquered people, and carried home
abundance of spoil.*
At the period in the history to which our observa
tions have now been extended, three things are es
pecially to be noted.
I. With the reign of David, according to the ac
counts which had reached the time of the author of
this history, the Jewish people entered on a new po
litical condition. His accession introduced the first
efficient central government, binding the loose con-

* 2 Sam. xi. 1— xii. 31. — " They  besieged Rabbah" (xi. 1) ;
the capital of the Ammonites stood near the source of the Arnon, twenty or
twenty-five miles east of the Jordan, in about latitude 32°. — " The Lord sent
Nathan unto David," &c. (xii. 1). This is the construction which tradition
or history had put upon the freedom which Nathan was said to have used
towards the monarch. Supposing the conversation here recorded to have
really taken place, Nathan may have become persuaded of David's crime
from his sudden marriage, coupled with the communication with which
Joab's messenger was known to have been charged. Or he may have had
means of more private information. It is in vain for us to speculate on
the precise character of facts recorded by a writer himself so distant from
the times of which he wrote, and with no better sources of knowledge
than we know him to have possessed. — " He shall restore the lamb
fourfold," &c. (6); agreeably to the law in Ex. xxii. 1. — "He called
his name Solomon" (24); that is, the pacific. — "He called his name
Jedidiah [darling of Jehovah], because of the Lord" (25); the Syriac,
Vulgate, and Arabic versions supply a word here, so as to read, " because
the Lord loved him." — " I have  taken the city of waters " (27) ;
Joab had either obtained a lodgement within the city, in a quarter situated on
the river, or he had possessed himself of a reservoir from which the capital
was supplied.

16 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. [LECT.
federation of the tribes into an organized and consol
idated power. What bond of union, or what pro
vision for joint counsels, existed during the three or
four hundred years between the conquest of the coun
try under Joshua and the establishment of the mon
archy under Saul, the history has left us almost en
tirely uninformed. Besides occasional arrangements
for the common benefit, which it is natural to sup
pose to have been made from time to time by the pa
triarchal chiefs between their tribes respectively,* the
family of the Levites, — the learned and sacerdotal
aristocracy of the nation, scattered on the one hand
over the country in its hereditary settlements- in all
the tribes, and on the other hand connected in a strict
subordination with its own head, the hereditary high-
priest, — must have exerted an efficient influence in
giving a harmony to the sentiments and spirit of the
people, and a unity of direction to its counsels, j"
The meetings of the tribes at the tabernacle, three
times in every year,, at the great religious festivals,
while they aided to cultivate a fraternal and patri
otic spirit, afforded suitable opportunities for frequent
consultation on public affairs; and the high-priest,
alike from his august position as head of his own
powerful tribe and administrator of the national wor
ship, and from his being the centre of resort from all
quarters of the country, would naturally become in
common times the person of chief consequence and
authority. Of Eli, with whom the history partially emerges
from the cloudy period of the Judges, we know noth
ing, except in his pontifical character. The adminis
tration of Samuel, whatever was its nature, was un-
* See Vol. I. pp. 164, 165. f Ibid. pp. 320, 321.

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 17
derstood, at the time the history was written, to
have been extremely limited in its extent* The
troubled reign of the first monarch is not related
to have done any thing towards a settlement of the
political institutions ; and of the seven years and a
half of the contemporaneous reigns of Ishbosheth
and David, the history tells us nothing beyond a few
particulars of the relations of the two princes to each
other. At the time of the composition of this book,
it was understood that the reign of the first mon
arch had been a failure, and that the Jewish royalty,
and the greatness of the one Jewish people, had re
mained to be built up by David.
II. With the age of David began the period of a
consecutive Jewish literature. Between the writing
of the Pentateuch by Moses, and the time now un
der our notice, there is nothing preserved for us ex
cept a single lyric, f in the way of literary compo
sition. The genius of David, and the quiet and pros
perity in which he established his people, introduced
another state of things. The quickened mind of the
nation exerted itself in the various departments of
thought and action, which have place in an orderly
and civilized society. New political relations were
formed; the internal administration was reduced to
system ; a generous public spirit was awakened ; pri
vate life, made secure, surrounded itself with comforts
and elegances ; commerce was extended ; the meth
ods of agricultural industry were improved, so as to
provide for the wants of a rapidly increasing popula
tion ; letters and art made their attractions felt. The
rich and graceful mind of David, stimulated by the
excitements of his own life and of the national prog-

* See Vol. II. p. 250, note. f Judges v.
2*

18 2 SAMUEL I. 1.- XII. 31. [LECT.
ress, working, as was natural, upon the sublime and
fruitful topics furnished by the religion of Moses,
and drawing its illustrations from the grandeur and
beauty of the natural objects of Palestine, set the
fashion of that elegant form of poetry, the sacred lyr
ic, in which he had afterwards many imitators, but
scarcely an equal. The philosophy of morals and
manners soon followed, to express the lessons im
pressed by the experience of artificial and luxurious
life. The age of David and Solomon was looked
back to in after times as (if I may so speak) the
Augustan age of Israel. The literary remains of the
time of the first kings will come under our notice
hereafter. All that is now to the purpose is to call
attention to the fact, that between the time of Moses
and that of the Psalms of David (with which the
history of Joshua was probably contemporaneous)
and the Proverbs of Solomon, all, as to literary monu
ments, is a blank.
III. We have now reached the period of the prob
able origin of the idea, running in a continuous
thread through all the later Jewish books, of a royal
Messiah, or anointed, a word indicating the ceremony
of inauguration of the Jewish kings.* I have else
where explained the manner in which I understand
that conception to have arisen, j- Moses had declared
that the purposes of his revelation were to be per
fected by a greater successor; that in due time a
prophet was to arise like unto himself. % He had also
recorded certain Divine declarations said to have been
made to the patriarchs of the nation, to the effect that
their posterity was to be a blessing to all the fami-
* See, e. g., 1 Sam. x. 1 ; xvi. 13 ; 2 Sam. ii. 4 ; v. 3.
t Vol. II. p. 377, et seq. { Deut xviii. 15.

XXXVII] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 19
lies of mankind ; * and also to the effect that they
should be progenitors of a royal race, f What de
gree of attention, if any, had been given to these in
timations between the time of Moses and that of Da
vid, we know not ; the history throws no light upon
the question. But at length, in David's person, a
royalty was established; the patriarchs, at the end
of the intervening ages, had in fact been made the
parents of a regal race. How natural that the sever
al intimations by Moses of a future prophet and bless
ing to the world, and of a future line of kings, should
be moulded into one conception in the Jewish mind,
and all be understood as relating to the same person.
How natural, too, from the spirit of the age, that
in this compound idea of prophet (or religious teach
er), of monarch, and of universal benefactor, the idea
of king, of ruler and soldier, should be prominent.
If Israel was to bless the world by teaching it the
true religion, how, agreeably to the conceptions and
habits of the age, was it to be expected to do this,
except by converting the idolatrous nations by its
resistless arms 1 Who was the prophet foretold by
Moses to be, except the conquering king and soldier,
said to have been foretold to the patriarchs ] And
when at last a king came to sit upon the throne of
Israel, with every fair prospect of the permanency
of the royal line, the ancient predictions must have
seemed to be in a way to speedy completion, according
to the interpretation which was erroneously put upon
them. The prophet and blessing, the promulgator of
Jehovah's authority, and benefactor to the world, were
to be looked for in a Messiah, an anointed king, a
* Gen. xii. 3 ; xviii. 18; xxii. 18 ; xxvi. 4 ; xxviii. 14.
f Gen. xvii. 6, 16 ; xxxv. 11.

20 2 SAMUEL I. 1. — XII. 31. [LECT.
princely stem from the legitimate root ; a royal son of
David. This was the conception of the future de
liverer, which from the time of the first kings pre
vailed in the Jewish nation, and runs through its
literary remains. This was the natural but great
perversion of the inspired sense of Moses, which in
a distant age, after its long unquestioned reception,
Jesus, the true fulfiller of Moses's prediction, the
prophet like unto himself, "had such a difficult task
to rectifv.*
In the Psalms of David, compositions contempo
raneous with that establishment of a Jewish monar
chy in which the conception of a royal prophet had
its rise, we accordingly find the earliest trace of the
existence of that conception. In the long time which
"had elapsed between the age of David and the com
pilation of the book now under our notice, f the
question had not failed to arise, how it was that
David, who was so zealous for the honor of his God
and the magnificence of his capital, should have left
for his son the work of building a temple for the
national worship. A probable explanation of the
fact would be, that the undertaking was a great
one, and that in the early part of his reign David
was busy with war, and with making his people
great and rich, and that in the latter part he was
distracted with domestic and public calamities. But
a natural ingenuity had framed, and tradition had
bequeathed, the easy reply, that a trusty servant of

* "Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did,
said, ' This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world. ' When
Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force to
make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone." (John
vi. 14, 15.)
¦f Comp. Vol. II. pp. 239-242.

XXXVII.] PROSPEROUS YEARS OF DAVID. 21
the king, under a Divine direction, had dissuaded
him from proceeding in the work, for reasons which
are recorded in full, but in which it is not' easy for
us to discern any cogency, or suitableness to bear
out the conclusion* The same legend declared that
the same Divine message to the monarch through
Nathan had assured him, that, instead of his build
ing a house for the Lord, the Lord would "make
a house" for him; that when his days should
be fulfilled, and he should sleep with his fathers,
the Lord would set up his seed after him, who
should both build a house for God's name, and in
whose person David's house and kingdom should
be established for ever, f From the identification
here of the monarch who was to erect the temple
with him whose throne was to be established for
ever, J it is not improbable that the legend preserved
in this place had its origin as far back as the time
of Solomon, and that its author, grounding himself
on that expectation of a regal Messiah, which was
known from the Psalms, as well as in other ways, to
have become current in the time of David, intended
to flatter the reigning monarch with the hope that
he was to be the illustrious Prophet-Prince, the Glo
ry of Israel, the Delight of all Nations.
* 2 Sam. vii. 5-13. The compiler of the books of Chronicles appar
ently thought so too, and has taken care to supply the omission. See
1 Chron. xxii. 8, 9 ; xxviii. 3.
t 1 Sam. vii. 11-16. % Ibid. 13.

22 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.

LECTUEE XXXVIII.
AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID.
2 SAMUEL XIII. 1 — XXIV. 25.
Crime of Amnon. — His Assassination by Absalom. — Flight and
Recall of Absalom. — His Rebellion. — Flight of David from
Jerusalem. — Perfidy of Ziba. — Insolence of Shimei. — Intrigues
of Hushai. — Suicide of Ahithophel. — Victory of David's For
ces. — Death of Absalom. — Restoration of David. — Feud be
tween the Tribes. — Revolt of Sheba. — Its Suppression by
Joab. — Hanging of Saul's Sons and Grandsons. — Their honor
able Burial. — Account of four Philistine Giants. — Two Psalms
of David. — List of his thirty-six Champions. — Census of the
People. — Punishment of it by a Pestilence. — Sacrifice at the
Threshing-floor of Araunah. — Character of David. — His Claims
to the Title of Prophet. — Description of him as being after
God's own Heart.
The crime with Bathsheba began a series of calam
ities which darkened the decline of David's life. He
who could so little control his own passions was no
example to his household, and the unnatural crimes
of his children were made to visit upon him his
own transgressions. Incest, fratricide, and rebellion
wrecked his domestic hopes, and brought down his
gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.
Amnon, David's oldest son,* conceived a guilty
passion for Tamar, his half-sister, the sister of Absa
lom. Following the advice of a subtle kinsman, he
lured her within his power, and, having by force ac
complished his criminal purpose, drove her with bru-

* 2 Sam. iii. 2.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 23
tal outrage from his house. It is said, that " when
King David heard of all these things, he was very
wroth " ; but we are not told of his evincing by any
act a displeasure which conscience must have made
to recoil upon himself. Absalom concealed his indig
nation, and waited his time for its indulgence. At
length, at the end of two years, taking advantage of
the unguarded hilarity of the holidays of a sheep-
shearing, which he had invited his brothers to pass
on one of his estates, he caused Amnon to be put to
death, and the exaggerated intelligence which the
afflicted parent first heard was, that all his sons had
shared Amnon's fate.
Absalom fled from his offended parent to the court
of Talmai, his maternal grandfather, king of a neigh
bouring district of Syria, and remained in that exile
three years. At the end of this time, the courtly
Joab, observing the king's regret for his absence,
contrived a way to make it decent for David to take
the step which his feelings so strongly prompted.
By his arrangement a woman in mourning weeds ap
peared in the royal presence, soliciting protection for
one of her sons who in a fray had killed his brother,
and against whom the rest of the family had vowed
deadly vengeance. Representing how useless it was
that her distress already endured for the loss of one
son should be increased by the slaying of another,
she obtained the royal assent to her petition, and
then went on to remonstrate with the king for pur
suing a course in the case of Absalom which he had
just condemned in an application to her own, de
claring at the same time that she did but express the
sense of the people, to whom Absalom was dear.*
* So I interpret the words, " the people have made me afraid," in xiv. 15.

24 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.
On her acknowledgment that Joab had prompted
her to this proceeding, David sent for his general,
and charged him with the recall of his banished son.
Joab brought the prince to Jerusalem, where, how
ever, David did not admit him to an interview, but
for two years kept him in honorable duress in his
own house. At the end of that time, by the further
good offices of Joab, whom the impatient and per
verse violence of Absalom towards himself had failed
to estrange, a complete reconciliation was effected;
and "Absalom came to the king, and bowed him
self on his face to the ground before the king ; and
the king kissed Absalom." *
The young prince was unprincipled and ambitious,
and he possessed those advantages of person and ad
dress which easily captivate the generality of men.
The tasteful magnificence of his retinue, the conde
scending grace of his attentions to all suitors, and
his lamentations over existing defects in the admin
istration of government, and professions of a desire
to correct them, produced their natural effect, and
"Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel."
The power of the arts of the demagogue to pave
the way to usurped and despotic sway was under-

* 2 Sam. xiii. 1 — xiv. 33. — " Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David's broth
er, answered," &c. (xiii. 32 ; comp. 3.) Jonadab, by his officiousness on this
occasion, appears to have been inclined to guard himself against the first sus
picion of participation in the crime of Amnon. — " Let the king remember
the Lord thy God " (xiv. 11); that is, I think, let the king ratify his
promise by calling Jehovah to remembrance in an oath, as accordingly he
presently proceeds to do. — " He weighed the hair of his head at two
hundred shekels" (26) ; that is, according to different computations of the
weight of the skekel, a year's growth of his hair weighed two pounds and
a half, or over nine pounds. The statement has the same legendary appear
ance as that of Goliath's height. — " He would not come to him" (29).
Joab may have thought that, for the present, he had meddled enough for
prudence in the feuds of the royal house.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 25
stood in those times as well as in the present. The
popular mind being, as he thought, sufficiently pre
pared, Absalom obtained his father's leave for a short
absence from Jerusalem, as if in fulfilment of a vow.
Escorted by a party of two hundred men, who " went
in their simplicity, and knew not any thing," he bent
his way towards Hebron, the ancient capital of David.
Here, being joined by Ahithophel, a trusted counsel
lor of his father, he set up the standard of revolt,
and the " people increased continually with Absa
lom." On receiving intelligence of the insurrection, Da
vid made all haste to escape from Jerusalem with his
court, leaving only " ten women, which were concu
bines, to keep the house." Besides his Cherethite
and Pelethite guards, a party of six hundred men,
who under Ittai had followed him from the home
of his youth at Gath, still remained faithful to his
tottering cause, notwithstanding his proposal to dis
miss them without offence. Zadok and Abiathar, with
the Levites " bearing the ark of the covenant of God,"
presented themselves to accompany him in his flight;
but his policy dictated a different course ; he bade them
return with it into the city, veiling their object under
the pretence of the obligations of their priestly office,
and there, when Absalom should have arrived, to
make observations for their master's service, to be
communicated to him in his exile through their two
sons, who should lurk in the neighbourhood for that
purpose. To traverse further the artifices of Ahitho
phel, whose cunning he dreaded in an enemy, as he
had known how to prize it in a friend, he prevailed
on Hushai, another of the adroit managers about the
throne, to go into Jerusalem, profess allegiance to
Absalom, insinuate himself into his counsels, and,
VOL. III. 3

26 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.
placing himself in communication with Zadok and
Abiathar, the priests, watch with them for oppor
tunities to betray the rebel cause.*
The disordered state of affairs brought some of its.
usual consequences. While perfidy was so naturally
apprehended on all sides, Ziba, the steward of Mephi
bosheth, took the opportunity to abuse the easy ear
of the monarch, and, approaching him with a pres
ent of supplies which his necessities made grateful,
accused his crippled master of having remained be
hind in the city with treacherous views of ambition,

* 2 Sam. xv. 1-37. — " Absalom prepared him chariots," &c. (1). As
Amnon was dead, and probably Chileab, since we hear nothing of him after the
mention of his birth (iii. 3), Absalom excited no suspicion by taking on him
self the state of heir apparent. — " After forty years " (7), Absalom proposed
to go to Hebron. Forty years after what? After his return from exile,
the context plainly indicates. But at the time of that return he was already
a grown man, with four children (xiv. 27), and forty years after he must have
been not less than sixty years of age, quite too old to be called by his father
" the young man," as in xviii. 5, 29. Forty years after the beginning of
David's reign, say some of the commentators; but this does not agree with
the context, and, besides, David's whole reign, which was protracted after
Absalom's insurrection, is said to have lasted only forty yeaTS (v. 4, 5).
Forty years from Absalom's birth, say others ; but to this there are the
same objections, for Absalom is said to have been born after his father came
to the throne (iii. 2). The Syriac and Arabic versions cut the knot, and
read after four years ; but this is too plainly only the gloss of commenta
tors, who see the difficulty, and meet it with a conjectural emendation. The
text presents one of the instances of the disjointed character of a history
compiled from different and uncertain sources. — " Six hundred men which
came after him from Gath" (18); comp. 1 Sam. xxvii. 2, 3. — "Where
fore goest thou also with us? " (19). It was natural for David to distrust
the fidelity of these Gittites under the existing circumstances, and to be will
ing to dismiss, if it could be done without provoking, them. — ." And Abia
thar went up, until all the people," &c. (24). Rather, it would seem, when all
the people had left the city, Abiathar, who had remained to oversee the last
arrangements, joined, the retiring party. — " Art not thou a seer?" (27) ;
that is, in this place, a person who can see how to render a dexterous and
dangerous service. — " Where he worshipped God " (32) ; that is, as the
word denotes, with prostration and private prayer ; there is no intimation of
any sacrifice.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 27
and, as the reward of his own pretended fidelity,
received from David an investiture of the inheritance
of the son of Saul. On the other hand, one Shimei,
anciently of Saul's household, assailed the retiring
king and his party with violence and insults. Abishai
would have pursued, to slay him ; but David, heart
broken at his son's ingratitude, bade him desist
from his purpose, and go on with the rest in peace.
Hushai presented himself to Absalom at Jerusalem,
as had been arranged, and, after some hesitation, was
received into his service and confidence. To widen
irreparably the breach between the father and the
son, and to publish, in a manner which the usages of
the time made significant, the claim which he asserted
to the throne, Absalom was advised by Ahithophel to
take possession of his father's harem, with a publicity
which should make it known to all the people. So at
least the story had been told, and at length was here
recorded.* The policy of David succeeded. The counsels of
Ahithophel were baffled by the superior cunning of
Hushai. The former asked for the command of
twelve thousand men, with whom he might make
immediate pursuit, and strike a sudden blow upon
the dispirited and disorganized company of David.
But Hushai represented, that it would not be safe
to press the king too sharply; that he was a valiant
and a crafty man, wrought up now, with his attend
ants, to the courage of desperation ; and that the
course of prudence would be to delay an attack till
a vast force should be collected, sufficient, under
the prince's own conduct, to light upon him as the
* 2 Sam. xvi. 1-23. — " So they spread Absalom a tent," &c. (22).
Comp. iii. 7, 8 ; xii. 8, 11; 1 Kings ii. 21 -23.

28 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.
dew falleth upon the ground, or to drag into the
water the walls of any city where he might seek
a refuge. This bombastic language took the fancy
of his fellow-counsellors, and the fatal procrastination
allowed time to the party of David to recruit its cour
age and its force. Through the sons of the priests,
with whom he communicated by a woman, Hushai
sent intelligence to David of the state of affairs in
the city. Their movement was observed, and they
were followed and obliged to conceal themselves, but
succeeded in reaching the king's camp, who, agree
ably to the advice he had received, forthwith passed
over with his company to the region eastward of the
Jordan, where they received ample supplies from
wealthy adherents of the royal cause belonging to
that district. Ahithophel, mortified at being sup
planted in his influence with Absalom, and appre
hending the worst consequences from the imprudent
course that was pursued, retired to his own estate, and
put an end to his life. The prince, too, giving the
command of his forces to his cousin Amasa, advanced
across the Jordan, and " Israel and Absalom pitched
in the land of Gilead."*
The fond affection of the parent was not lost in
the resentments of the outraged monarch. When,
for the approaching engagement, David marshalled
his forces in three bands under Joab, his brother
Abishai, and Ittai, and the people passed before him
in review as he stood by the gate-side of Mahanaim,
he gave strict charge to these officers, in the hearing
of the host, to spare the young rebel's life. In com-
* 2 Sam. xvii. 1 - 29. — " Shobi, the son of Nahash," &c. (27) ; appar
ently a son of David's former friend, the king of the Ammonites ; comp.
x. 2. — " Machir, the son of Ammiel," &c. (ibid.); the former host of
Mephibosheth ; comp. ix. 4.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 29
pliance with the entreaty of his followers, that he
would not expose his person in the action, he re
mained behind. Absalom, charging on a mule upon a
portion of the hostile force, was caught by the head in
the branches of a tree under which he rode, and, the
animal moving on from beneath him, remained sus
pended in the air. Joab, informed of his position,
and disregarding a remonstrance which reminded him
of the injunction of David, " took three darts in his
hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom,
while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak." The
deed being finished by some young officers in his
train, the body was hastily buried, Joab called off
his victorious troops, after no less than twenty thou
sand of the enemy had been slain, and the rebel
party dispersed over the country, each man to his own
home. No son of the ill-fated prince survived. Noth
ing remained to keep him in remembrance but the
tradition of his treason, and a monument (still called
Absalom's pillar at- the time of the compilation of
this history) which he had himself erected, in his
childless state, to rescue his name from oblivion.
Joab, reluctant at first, yielded at length to the
necessity of the case, and proceeded to send his tidings
of momentously mingled import to the king. " And
the king was much moved, and went up to the cham
ber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, thus
he said, ' O my son Absalom ! my son, my son Absa
lom ! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom,
my son, my son ! ' " *
* 2 Sam. xviii. 1-33. — "The battle was in the wood of Ephraim"
(6). But all the territory of that tribe was on the western side of the Jor
dan, in Palestine proper. Some of the commentators explain the name
as having reference to an ancient disaster of the Ephraimites in the country
of Gilead, recorded in Judges xii. 4-6. — " Absalom in his lifetime had
3*

30 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.
David's grief for his son seemed to rebuke his fol
lowers for their victory, and they gathered in Ma-
hanaim with the aspect rather of penitents than
of conquerors. On reflection, so offensive was it to
them, that, engrossed by his personal sorrow, he should
appear indifferent to the great public deliverance that
had been wrought, that they began to desert him in
great numbers, till, giving heed to Joab's remon
strances against his ungrateful selfishness, and warn
ings of the ruin it would provoke, he was prevailed
upon to present himself at the city gate, and receive
the congratulations and homage of the people.
Throughout the tribes, the public sense was now
expressed in favor of David's restoration, a movement
which he furthered by sending a conciliatory message
through Zadok and Abiathar to the elders of his own
tribe, inviting them to take the lead in replacing
taken and reared up for himself a pillar," &c. (18). The contents of this
verse are noticeable, as illustrative of the superficial and fragmentary char
acter of the book. In the preceding verse, a " very great heap of stones"
is said to have been raised over Absalom's body by those who buried him
after the battle. Here we are told that " Absalom in his lifetime had taken
and reared up for himself a pillar." They seem to have been different ac
counts of the origin of a well-known monument, still existing in the compil
er's time. And that time was considerably remote from the date of the
event, for he notes that the monument continues to be " called Absalom's
place unto this day." Further, how was it that Absalom had "no son to
keep his name in remembrance"? According to xiv. 27, he had three, at
least. And even if they had all died, why was he in despair of other pos
terity, when he had had children, could not be prevented from having others
by the barrenness of a wife, because he lived where polygamy was allowed,
and was himself still a young man (xviii. 5, 29, 32) at a period subsequent
to the erection of the pillar, which is said to have had its occasion in his
despair of having progeny? The common hypothesis of the character of
these writings, as containing consistent and authentic history, is utterly un
susceptible of defence. They are suitable to be put to such use as Niebuhr
and Arnold have made of Livy's legends in respect to the early history of
Rome, but an implicit reliance on them is out of the question. — " And
Ahimaaz answered, ' I saw a great tumult, but I knew not what it was ' "
(29) ; but comp. 21.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 31
him on the throne, and by winning over his nephew
Amasa, the captain of the adverse host, with the
promise of placing him at the head of his own army
in the room of Joab. So the tribe of Judah met him
at the ferry over the Jordan, opposite to Jericho, to
conduct him with honor back to his capital.
Shimei, the Benjamite, who on David's retreat had
followed him with insults, now, with an attendance of
a thousand men, met him at the landing, and, with
humble acknowledgments, solicited forgiveness, which
he obtained, notwithstanding the expostulation of
Abishai, who on the former occasion had hardly been
restrained from taking vengeance on the spot. The
steward, Ziba, too, came to pay his respects, accom
panied by his fifteen sons and twenty servants ; the
prince Mephibosheth, who vindicated himself from
the treachery which had been laid to his charge,
and to whom the king so far repaired the injustice
that had in consequence been done, as to direct him
to resign only one half of his wealth, instead of the
whole, to his calumnious servant ; and Barzillai, the
aged Gileadite, who had so bountifully provided for
the king on the first news of his disasters, and who
now, declining an invitation to court as a translation
not suited to his years, obtained the promise of Da
vid's friendship and patronage for his son Chimham,
who accordingly joined the royal train, when, escorted
by " all the people of Judah, and also half the people
of Israel," it reentered the walls of the capital city.*

* 2 Sam. xix. 1-40. — " Judah came to Gilgal " (15); comp. Joshua v.
9. — " Behold, I am come the first this day of all the house of Joseph" (20).
Shimei, as well as his late master, Saul, was of the tribe of Benjamin. The
tribes of Joseph and Benjamin, however, were closely allied, Rachel having
been the mother of both these patriarchs ; and their camps had accordingly
been arranged together in the wilderness ; comp. Numb. ii. 18 - 24 ; Vol. I.

32 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1.- XXIV. 25. [LECT.
But the troubles of the time were not yet over.
The rivalry, at least four centuries old, between the
two principal tribes and their respective adherents,
was always seeking opportunities to break out. The
northern people, with their " ten parts in the king "
to only two of the other party, were indignant at the
officious forwardness of the Judahites in the counter
revolution which had now been consummated, and at
the partiality with which they might naturally be re
garded by a monarch of their own blood ; and, when
reproaches had been retaliated in a style dictated by
the pride of place, and " the words of the men of Ju
dah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel,"
the latter were provoked to resort again to deeds, and,
at the summons of " a man of Belial, whose name was
Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjamite," to organize
another insurrection. Amasa, the new favorite, was
instructed to muster the men of Israel to march with
in three days against the rebels ; but, some delay occur
ring, Abishai, accompanied by his brother Joab (ap
parently now in a subordinate capacity), was direct
ed, at the head of the king's guards and some other
forces hastily levied, at once to undertake the war.
Coming up with Amasa at Gibeon, only eight or
ten miles north of Jerusalem, Joab seized the op
portunity to rid himself of his new rival, and, ap
proaching as if to salute him, ran his sword through
his body, and despatched him with a single blow. The
p. 315. Their political relations, from the earliest times down to a period
half a century later than David, seem to have corresponded with their natural
affinity, Benjamin adhering to the confederacy of the northern tribes under
the lead of Ephraim (comp. Vol. II. pp. 121- 123, 172) till the revolt under
Jeroboam, when it first took its place with Judah, and retained it through
the whole of the later history. — " When he was come to Jerusalem to meet
the king " (25) ; but the rest of the narrative seems to show that Mephibo
sheth had never left Jerusalem; comp. xvi. 3 ; xix. 24.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 33
two brothers then proceeded on their expedition, and
found the insurgent army intrenched in Abel of Beth-
maachah, a city in the north of Palestine, apparently on
the eastern side of Jordan, in the defiles of Anti-Leba
non. This they undertook to reduce by siege, and
at length had distressed the garrison so far, that, by
the advice of a "wise woman," who had conferred
with Joab from the walls, "they cut off the head
of Sheba, the son of Bichri, and cast it out to Joab.
And he blew a trumpet, and they retired from the city,
every man to his tent. And Joab returned to Jeru
salem unto the king." The connected narrative of
David's sole reign here concludes, with another list
of the principal officers of his court and army. The
curtain had risen on the ingenuous and happy shep
herd-boy of Bethlehem. It falls, vast, heavy, and
black, on the famous, afflicted, conscience-burdened
chief of the powerful monarchy of Israel.*
* 2 Sam. xix. 41. — xx. 26. — " We have ten parts in the king " (xix. 43);
Simeon, whose territory lay contiguous at the south, was the natural ally of
Judah; see also Vol. I. p. 315; Judges i. 3, 17; 1 Chron. xii. 24, 25. —
" Every man to his tents, 0 Israel " (xx. 1) ; the customary national war-
cry. — " He that favoreth Joab, and he that is for David, let him go after
Joab" (11) ; as if it were said, notwithstanding what Joab has done, let
there be no misgivings about his authority ; he is David's friend and officer,
and to desert him would be no less than treason against the monarch. —
" Every one that came by him stood still" (12) ; this narrative so closely
resembles in many verbal particulars the previous one of the death of Asahel
by the hand of Abner (comp. ii. 23), that one cannot avoid the suspicion
of their being different versions of the same story. — "A man of Mount
Ephraim, Sheba" (21) ; but according to a previous statement (1), Sheba
was not of the tribe of Ephraim, but of that of Benjamin ; perhaps he is
called an Ephraimite simply as an adherent of the northern party, of which
Ephraim was the head. — "Joab was over all the host," &c. (23-26).
A repetition of viii. 16 - 18, with some differences. In the first list Se-
raiah is said to have been scribe, in the second, Sheva. Zadok and Abia
thar are in the second statement said to have been priests ; in the first, Za
dok, and Ahimelech, Abiathar's son. The first mentions David's sons as
chief rulers ; the second gives the name of Ira, the Jairite, instead of theirs.
And the second adds to the former list the name of Adoram, as having
been " over the tribute."

34 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.
The last four chapters of the book form an ap
pendix, in which it appears to have been the purpose
of the writer, — or, as probably, of some one after
him who added to his work, — to use a sort of drag
net, to bring together every loose fragment that was
floating on the current of tradition, relating to the
time of David. There are some miscellaneous narra
tives, of a part of which there is no trace in any other
portion of Scripture; and there are two lyric com
positions ascribed to the king, one of which is also
found in the collection in the Book of Psalms.
In the first place, there is a shocking account of
David's giving up two sons and five grandsons of Saul
to be hanged by a rabble of Amorites, — the grand
sons, to make the case yet worse, being sons, by an
other husband, of Michal, the wife of David's youth,
to whom, too, he had been indebted for his escape
from extreme danger. The story is, that the country
was afflicted, three successive years, with a grievous
famine, and that the Lord, on inquiry, told David
that it was a judgment for the crime of Saul, who,
contrary to an oath of the people four hundred years
before, had put to the sword certain Amorites of the
city of Gibeon. David accordingly sent for the idol
atrous savages of that place, and put to them the ac
commodating question, wherewith he should make
atonement, that they might " bless the inheritance of
the Lord." They told him they would be satisfied with
having seven of Saul's posterity to hang, and the bar
gain was concluded. He reserved Mephibosheth, " be
cause of the Lord's oath that was between David and
Jonathan," Mephibosheth's father, but gave up " the
two sons of Eizpah, the daughter of Aiah, whom she
bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and the five
sons of the daughter of Saul," his own Michal. The

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 35
loathsome character of the story is only relieved by
the pathetic incident of the watching of Eizpah, day
and night, through the season of drought, over the
remains of her murdered children. The reader learns
nothing from it, unless it be, that, by some of the Isra
elites in the writer's time, David was esteemed to have
been a monster. David was told of Eizpah's perform
ance of this melancholy office ; and, all the male pos
terity of Saul who might have competed with him
for the throne being now out of his way, except the
cripple Mephibosheth, whom he kept as his prisoner,
he bethought himself to pay a graceful compliment
to their remains. He " went and took the bones of
Saul, and the bones of Jonathan his son, from the men
of Jabesh-Gilead  ; and they gathered the bones
of them that were hanged ; and the bones of Saul and
Jonathan his son buried they in the country of Benja
min in Zelah, in the sepulchre of Kish his father." *

* 2 Sam. xxi. 1-14. — " There was a famine in the days of David"
(1) ; the writer of the fragment does not pretend to know when. — " Be
cause he slew the Gibeonites " (ibid.) ; a fact nowhere else referred to, that
I remember. — "The Gibeonites were  of the remnant of the Amo
rites, and the children of Israel had sworn unto them " (2). Comp. Joshua
ix. The people under Joshua had sworn to the suppliants before them, and
to their then existing fellow-citizens, not to their posterity to the end of time
(Josh. ix. 15). But it is all blunder and incoherence. The people of Gibeon
are called "the remnant of the Amorites." But they belonged within ten
miles of Jerusalem, and not on the other side of Jordan. They belonged
to the Hivite race (Josh. ix. 7), a tribe of Canaan proper, and not to the
Amorite (Josh. ix. 10). — " We will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah
of Saul " (6) ; Gibeah had been Saul's home (1 Sam. xv. 34), perhaps his
birthplace, a fact of which the Gibeonites designed to avail themselves to
make the insult more offensive. — " The. five sons of Michal, the daughter
of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the Meho-
lathite" (8). According to 1 Sam. xxv. 44 (comp. 2 Sam. iii. 15),
Michal was married, not to Adriel, but to " Phalti, the son of Laish, which
was of Gallim." It was Saul's elder daughter, Merab (1 Sam. xiv. 49),
who had also first been betrothed to David, that became the wife of Adriel
(xviii. 19). Further, according to 2 Sam. vi. 23, Michal, after her

36 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.
Another portion of this singular excrescence on the
history gives an account of four sons of a giant of
Gath, who, in the course of another war with the Phi
listines, "fell by the hand of David and by the hand
of his servants." One of them, Ishbi-benob, noted for
his ponderous spear, was slain by Abishai ; another,
Saph, by Sibbechai, the Hushathite; a third, Goliath
of Gath, " the staff of whose spear was like a weav
er's beam," by Elhanan, the son of Jaare-oregim ; and
a fourth, " a man of great stature, that had on every
hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes," by
Jonathan, son of Shimeah, David's brother.*
The next chapter is occupied by a lyric poem,
which it is said " David spake unto the Lord in the
day that the Lord had delivered him out of the hand
of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul." It
is also preserved in the Book of Psalms, being the
eighteenth of the poems in that collection. The two
copies present some diversities of reading. But the
remarks to which - this fact gives occasion will be
more in place when it comes again under our view.
The next chapter begins with another lyric, not
elsewhere preserved, and said to be a copy of " the

repudiation by David, " had no child until the day of her death." — " They
hanged them in the hill before the Lord" (2 Sam. xxi. 9); that is, as
we should say, " in the sight of heaven." De Wette's notion of their being
offered as a sacrifice has no plausibility; no nation, so far as we know,
ever offered sacrifices by hanging the victim.
* 2 Sam. xxi. 15- 22. — " Elhanan  slew the brother of Goliath,"
&c. (19). The words the brother of are inserted by our translators, with
out any authority from the Hebrew text, or from any ancient version. They
of course did so to conceal the contradiction between this passage and the
previous one, where this champion, the same both by name and by descrip
tion, is circumstantially related to have been slain by David himself; comp".
1 Sam. xvii. 49. They make the interpolation according to 1 Chron. xx. 5.
But the ancient translators were too faithful to venture on so bold an emen
dation of the clear text in Samuel, great as the temptation was.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 37
last words of David, the son of Jesse, the man who
was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of
Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel." However
this may have been, the poem is, in force of imagery
and language, not unworthy of its reputed authorship.
Then follows a list of "the mighty men whom
David had," said at the close to be thirty-seven in
number, though the names given are only thirty-six.
The first three were " the Tachmonite, that sat in the
seat, chief among the captains ; the same was Adino,
the Eznite " ; " Eleazar, the son of Dodo, the Ahohite " ;
and " Shammah, the son of Agee, the Hararite " ;
persons, of neither of whom have we read any thing
before. Of these three it is related, that when, at a
certain time, David was fainting for thirst in the cave
of Adullam, they " brake through the host of the
Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Beth
lehem," many miles off, which, when brought, he
refused to drink, and " poured it out unto the
Lord," saying, that he could only look upon it as
" the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their
lives." Of the first it is further said, that " he slew
eight hundred at one time"; of the second, that, being
left alone with David and two others in the pres
ence of the enemy, " he smote the Philistines until
his hand was weary, and his hand clave unto the
sword " ; and of the third, that he distinguished him
self in an action against the same enemy in the
midst of " a piece of ground full of lentiles." Of a
second triplet of worthies, two only are named, Abishai
and Benaiah, of whose services much has been already
recorded. Of Abishai it is further related here, that
" he lifted up his spear against three hundred and
slew them ;  was he not most honorable of three %
therefore he was their captain: howbeit, he attained
VOL. III. 4

38 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1.- XXIV. 25. [LECT.
not unto the first three " ; and of Benaiah, that " he
slew two lion-like men of Moab ; he went down also
and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow ;
and he slew an Egyptian, a goodly man." Of the re
maining thirty-one, the names are almost all new ; nor
is any thing specified of their exploits. Among them
are mentioned Asahel, the brother of Joab, Ittai, and
Uriah, the victim at Eabbah of David's lust. The
name of Joab does not occur in the catalogue*
" Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against
Israel," says the writer, following the familiar phrase
ology of the Book of Judges.f And' the way in which
the Divine displeasure was in this instance manifested
was to prompt David to order a census of the tribes,
— a proceeding which, it seems, was criminal and de
serving of punishment, — and then to inflict that
punishment, not on the offending monarch, but on his
passive people. " Joab and the captains of the host,"
when they found their remonstrances disregarded,
proceeded to execute the king's will ; and, at the end
of a circuit which occupied nine months and twenty
days, reported that " there were in Israel eight hun
dred thousand valiant men that drew the sword, and
the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men."
David was now smitten with remorse, and " the
prophet Gad, David's seer," a personage now for the
second time introduced, J proposed to him, in Jehovah's
name, to make a selection between three forms of pun
ishment, viz. seven years of famine, three months of
defeat, or three days of pestilence. He chose the last,

* 2 Sam. xxiii. 1-39. — " Adullam" (13); comp. Josh. xv. 35.—
" Shammah, the Harodite " (25) ; comp. 11 ; the same person seems to be
mentioned and counted twice ; also comp. 33. — "Ittai, the son of Ribai,"
&c. (29) ; comp. xv. 19.
f Comp. Judges ii. 14, 20 ; iii. 8 ; x. 7. % See 1 Sam. xxii._5.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 39
and accordingly the lives of seventy thousand of his
subjects paid the penalty of his trespass. When the
angel of death had reached the capital city, David saw
him standing, ready to strike, by the threshing-place
of one Araunah the Jebusite, a king who lived in
Jerusalem; and supplicating the Lord for mercy, it
was granted. Gad came to him with a command to
rear an altar on the spot. Araunah, seeing him ap
proach, went to meet him, and being informed of his
object, offered every facility for its execution. " So
David bought the threshing-floor and the oxen for
fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar
unto the Lord, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-
offerings. So the Lord was entreated for the land,
and the plague was stayed from Israel." And with
this incident the Second Book of Samuel concludes.*
The narrative of David's life presents him to the
reader as one of those able and fortunate persons,
occasionally appearing in history, who, raising them
selves from an obscure station to sovereignty, have
known how to consolidate, by their skill in adminis
tration, the power acquired by their energy and cour
age. He begins by distinguishing himself in war;
by his valor and accomplishments he attracts the
notice of his king ; by his deportment in the stations
to which the royal favor raises him, he recommends
himself to the good-will of the people; before the

* 2 Sam. xxiv. 1-25. — "All these things did Araunah, as a king,
give unto the king " (23). The original reads, "These things did King
Araunah," &c. Our translators supply the word as; the Septuagint, Syriac,
and Arabic versions omit the word king; Le Clerc proposes to render it in
the vocative, and to understand the words as the words of Araunah, speak
ing of himself in the third person, " All these things has Araunah, 0 king,
given," &c, — all manifest expedients to save the writer's credit, by avoid
ing the conclusion from his words, that in the time of David there was still
a Jebusite monarch in Jerusalem.

40 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.
throne becomes vacant, his qualities for command, and
his frequent display of uncommon resources in times
of difficulty, have made him prominent in his own
tribe, and secured their confidence ; his popular ad
dress has won their attachment; his spreading repu
tation has made him their pride ; and they fix upon
him as the man most competent to take the lead in
providing for the common welfare, constantly threat
ened by their Philistine neighbours. Seven years of
trial prove him competent to reign. Meantime the
tribes which have set up a separate government un
der the old dynasty have not found reason to be satis
fied with the experiment. Their monarch has no
qualities to compete with the brilliant character of
David ; a weak hand holds the reins ; faction invades
the royal court and council ; disgust and disaffection
spread among the people ; the throne is made vacant
by assassination, and with a prompt consent the di
vided portions of the nation reunite under a prince
well proved to be competent to care for the common
welfare, and to promote the national greatness. Then
follow the not uncommon fortunes of a new kingdom
and dynasty; victories abroad, with a full share of
disorders and turbulence at home, and all the anxieties
and discontents of an untried form of government and
a transition state in public affairs.
The history makes David's a very mixed character.
It represents him as capable of a noble magnanimity,
and of the most odious baseness ; as proceeding in his
wars with a horrible barbarity, and as moved, within
the domestic circle, by the tenderest affections. In
these particulars, it does not take him out of the large
class of famous men who, by the splendor of their ex
ploits and the occasional greatness of their conduct,
have bought an easy estimate of their vices and

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 41
crimes. Greatness tempted and intoxicated him, as
it has done others in the same position. He had im
petuous passions ; he gave them wild way ; and they
led him on to atrocious perfidy, and to utter shame.
The history in no manner or degree countenances
the idea that he was a prophet, in the common ac
ceptation of that word, or that in any sense he was
one of those whom God has selected to communicate
his will and purposes. So far from representing Da
vid as commissioned to make known God's will to
other men, it expressly, in the legends it has pre
served, represents Gad and Nathan as commissioned
to declare God's will to David. I speak here, of
course, only of the representation made in this history,
even if we should ascribe to it an authority to which it
does not pretend, and is not entitled. When we come
to examine the writings of David, in the collection
of Psalms, there will be occasion to observe what
addition they make, if any, to the information pre
served in the history concerning his character and
claims. Further, there is reason to presume, that David
was not so much as reckoned among the Prophets
by that age of Jews which arranged the contents of
the Old Testament under the divisions of Law, Proph
ets, and Hagiographa. Otherwise, why were not his
writings placed in the second class, instead of the
third, where actually they are found %
Eevealed religion is in no way accountable for the
wickedness of David, any more than for that of Jero
boam, or of Alexander Borgia. If the writer of the
Book of Samuel, when he quoted Samuel as describing
David to be " a man after God's own heart," had
meant to say that his character was one altogether
or peculiarly worthy of the Divine approbation, that
4.*

42 2 SAMUEL XIII. 1. — XXIV. 25. [LECT.
would be nothing to the purpose, for it would have been
an assertion of a person irresponsible as far as reve
lation is concerned, not an assertion of God himself, or
of any one authorized by him to make it. But, in fact,
the popular cavil which these words have furnished
is one founded on mere ignorance of their meaning.
When we speak of a person as after our own heart,
we mean that he commands our full approbation.
But in the original Hebrew, the phrase has no such
emphatic sense. It denotes simply, that the person
to whom it is applied is the object of choice, of pref
erence, and that for the particular purpose in contem
plation. The writer represents Samuel as having
declared David to be " a man after God's own heart,"
simply in comparison with Saul, whom he declares
to have violated the Divine will in his public adminis
tration. There is no reference whatever to private
character. " Samuel said to Saul," are the words of
the record, " Thou hast done foolishly ; thou hast not
kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which
he commanded thee;  thy kingdom shall not
continue ; the Lord hath sought him a man after his
own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be
captain over his people, because thou hast not kept
that which the Lord commanded thee." * I repeat,
that if this writer had been of such a dull moral
sense as to suppose that a character like that of Da
vid could be an object of the cordial complacency of
the perfectly good God, it would be an unimportant
fact ; because, if we have taken a correct view of his
work, there is no ground for ascribing to him any such
commission to speak in God's name, as would make
revealed religion in the slightest degree responsible
* 1 Sam. xiii. 13, 14; comp. xv. 28; xxviii. 17, 18; 1 Chron. x. 13, 14.

XXXVIII.] AFFLICTED YEARS OF DAVID. 43
for any such opinion of his. But it is only justice
to him to understand that his words sustain no such
sense. We can no more maintain that it was his
intention to express that sense for himself, than that
it was in his power to implicate revealed religion in
the responsibility of declaring it.

44 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.

LECTUEE XXXIX.
1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43.
THE TIME OF SOLOMON.
Period of History to which the Two Books of Kings relate. —
Originally one Book, and probably one with the Books of
Samuel. — Time of the Author. — References to Earlier Writ
ings. — Quotation and References in the New Testament. —
Solomon associated with his Father in the Kingdom. — Death
of David. — Execution of Adonijah, Joab, and Shimei. — Mar
riage of Solomon to an Egyptian Princess. — His Vision at Gib
eon. — His Wise Judgment. — His Purveyorships. — Building of
the Temple, and of the Royal Palace. — Consecration of the
Temple. — Wealth and Greatness of Solomon. — Visit of the
Queen of Sheba. — Constructive Idolatries of Solomon. — Dis
orders of the Last Part of his Reign. — His Death.
The portion of Jewish history embraced in the
two Books of Kings extends over a period of four
hundred and twenty-seven years. The first book re
lates the events of a hundred and twenty-seven years,
from the coronation of Solomon to the death of Je
hoshaphat, fourth king of Judah ; the second, those
of three hundred years, to the epoch of the captivity
of the people, and the destruction of Jerusalem and
its temple by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
The division of this portion of the history into two
books is modern. There is further very strong rea
son to believe that the Books of Samuel (so called),
and of Kings, originally constituted one continuous
treatise, the work of one compiler. They are ar
ranged as successive parts of one book in the Septua
gint and Vulgate versions, and " Four Books of

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 45
Kings" are mentioned in the earliest detailed cata
logue, that of Melito.* On the other hand, it has
been remarked, that the Books of Kings differ from
those of Samuel in containing frequent references to
earlier written authorities.-]- But this is a fact per
fectly consistent with their being the production of
one writer. For the earliest part of the history which
he undertook to relate, few or no written documents
of any authority existed. As his story descended to
more recent times, he found such documents ready to
his hand, and accordingly used and referred to them.
Of the author of the Books of Kings, whether the
same or not with the author of those of Samuel, we
know nothing whatever, except that we can determine
with some near approach to accuracy the time when
his treatise was produced. That this was a time long
subsequent to that of most of the events recorded, ap
pears from expressions frequently occurring, such as
that something, the origin of which is related, con
tinued " unto this day." % Chaldee forms of language
occur, indicating a period when the Hebrew phraseol
ogy had been affected by intercourse with the Babylo
nians. § The work was finished after the destruction
of the city in the year 588 before Christ, and after the
liberation of Jehoiachin, twenty-six years later; for
it relates those events. || It also appears to have been
finished before the death of Jehoiachin, who at the
time of his liberation was sixty-three years old ; ^[ oth-
* Apud Euseb., " Hist. Eccles.," Lib. IV. 26. See also Vol. II. pp.
237, 240.
t E. g. 1 Kings xi. 41 ; xiv. 19, 29 ; xv. 7 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 28.
% Comp. 1 Kings ix. 13, 21 ; x. 12, 21 ; xii. 19; xxii. 47; 2 Kings ii.
22; viii. 22 ; x. 27, 32 ; xiv. 7 ; xvi. 6 ; xvii. 23, 34, 41 ; xviii. 4 ; xxiii. 25.
§ E. g. 1 Kings vi. 1, 37, 38 ; viii. 2 ; xx. 14 - 17 ; 2 Kings iv. 3 ; xi. 13.
II 2 Kings xxv. 8, 27.
T[ Comp. 2 Kings xxiv. 8, 12 ; xxv. 27.

46 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.
erwise, it is natural to suppose that that event would
have been recorded. On the whole, we cannot be far
from the truth in assigning to the book the date of
the year 580 before the Christian era, four hundred
years after the death of Solomon, and two hundred
and fifty after that of Elisha.
The author refers to certain earlier writings, relat
ing other particulars of the time of which he treats.
They were called " The Book of the Acts of Solo
mon," * "The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings
of Israel," f and " The Book of the Chronicles of the
Kings of Judah." $ But whether they were public
records, or memoirs of the times from private hands,
we have no means of judging. It is worthy of re
mark, that he refers to them, not for the events which
he has himself recorded, but for " the rest of the
acts " of successive monarchs. His historical author
ity is simply that of an anonymous writer, composing
from sources of which we now know nothing, in an
age long subsequent to that of most of the events
which he records.
The Book of Kings is quoted only once in the New
Testament, § and there only for an illustration, and
not in a way to afford any testimony to its his
torical accuracy. There are also a few references to
incidents of the history treated in that book, but
none of them contains a mention of it, or is of a
description to afford any confirmation to its circum
stantial credibility. ||
* 1 Kings xi. 41.
f Ibid. xiv. 19 ; xv. 31 ; xvi. 5, 14, 20, 27 ; xxii. 39 ; 2 Kings i. 18 ;
x. 34 ; xiii..8, 12 ; xiv. 15, 28; xv. 11, 15, 21, 26, 31.
% 1 Kings xiv. 29; xv. 7, 23 ; xxii. 45 ; 2 Kings viii. 23 ; xii. 19 ; xiv.
18 ; xv. 6, 36 ; xvi. 19 ; xx. 20 ; xxi. 17, 25 ; xxiii. 28 ; xxiv. 5.
§ Rom. xi. 2 - 4 ; comp. 1 Kings xix. 18.
|| 1 Kings x. 1 ; comp. Matt. xii. 42, Luke xi. 31. 1 Kings xvii. 1 ;

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 47
The book opens with an account of the infirm old
age of David, and the arrangements made by him for
the succession to the throne, under the influence of
his favorite wife, and of the great officers of state in
her interest. Adonijah, his oldest surviving son, —
apparently apprehensive of the influence adverse to
his own pretensions which would be exerted over the
mind of David in his dotage by those immediately
about his person, — took measures, in concert with his
friends, Joab, the commander of the forces, and Abia
thar, the high-priest, to secure his birthright to the
inheritance of the kingdom, before it should be
placed beyond his power. His personal advantages
favored the enterprise; his father had treated him
with a partial affection ; and the state which he as
sumed, while it made its impression on the popular
mind, appeared in no wise unfit for the heir apparent
to the throne. He made a sacrifice-feast in the neieh-
bourhood of Jerusalem, to which he invited all the
royal family and principal courtiers, except his brother
Solomon, and Nathan, Benaiah, and others known to
be attached to the young prince.
Whether it was the purpose of Adonijah, on this
occasion, to announce his pretensions, the history does
not expressly declare. The opposite party, however,
took the alarm, and availed themselves of the proceed
ing to prejudice the mind of David, and urge him to
take immediate measures for the installation of Solo
mon in the royalty. By the advice of Nathan, Bath-
sheba presented herself before the king, and, pleading
a promise which she alleged him in some moment of
fondness to have made, made known to him that

comp. Luke iv. 25, James v. 17. 2 Kings v. 14 ; comp. Luke iv. 27. 1
Kings xviii. 13 ; comp. Rev. ii. 20.

48 1 KINGS I. 1.— XI. 43. [LECT.
Adonijah was plotting for the throne, and urged the
danger to which his success would expose herself and
her son. " While she yet talked with the king, Na
than the prophet also came in," as had been agreed,
and plying his already excited mind yet further by as
suring him that the party at Adonijah's feast were
even now saluting their host with royal honors, ex
postulated with him, as if it had been David's own
project, for not having communicated it to his faithful
counsellor. The superannuated monarch, bewildered
by the tidings of rebellion, the sight of female distress,
and the alarm and reproaches of his trusted courtier,
yielded every thing they desired. Bathsheba was re
called, and orders were given for the immediate inau
guration of her young son. " So Zadok the priest,
and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah, the son of
Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites,
went down, and caused Solomon to ride upon King
David's mule, and brought him to Gihon ; and Zadok
the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle,
and anointed Solomon ; and they blew the trumpet ;
and all the people said, ' God save King Solomon ! ' "
On the intelligence of this transaction, the party of
Adonijah dispersed in alarm. He betook himself to
the tabernacle for sanctuary, but, being reassured by a
message from Solomon, he presented himself and did
homage to the young king, who dismissed him with
orders to keep himself quiet at his house. *

* 1 Kings i. 1 - 53. — " Shimei and Rei " (8) ; persons not named else
where, unless this is the Shimei afterwards made one of Solomon's purvey
ors ; see iv. 18. — " Bring him down to Gihon " (33) ; the same, probably,
as " the pool of Siloam," — " Siloa's brook, that flowed
Fast by the oracles of God."
But see Robinson's "Biblical Researches," &c. Vol. I. pp. 512-514.

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 49
" Now the days of David drew nigh that he should
die," and Solomon approached to receive his last in
junctions. The aged monarch adjured his son, in the
first place, to "keep the charge of the Lord, to walk
in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his command
ments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is
written in the law of Moses " ; to remember certain
violent acts of his cousin Joab, done in former years,
" and let not his hoar head go down to the grave in
peace " ; to " show kindness unto the sons of Barzil-
lai the Gileadite," in acknowledgment of his hospi
tality during the insurrection of Absalom ; and, on
the other hand, to remember Shimei, who on the same
occasion had approached David with insult. " ' He
came down to meet me at Jordan,' " said the dying
king to his son, " ' and I sware to him by the Lord,
saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword ;
now therefore hold him not guiltless; for thou art
a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do
unto him ; but his hoar head bring thou down to
the grave with blood.' So , David slept with his fa
thers," after a reign of forty years.*
The first cares of the young prince were to secure
himself on the throne, and execute the vindictive
.pleasure of his father. Adonijah having rashly made
interest with the queen mother, or at least being re
ported by her to have done so, to obtain Abishag, the
last mistress of David, in marriage, Solomon inter
preted the application as indicating a new design of
his brother upon the throne ; " and King Solomon
— " Jonathan, the son of Abiathar the priest " (42) ; the same messenger
who had formerly made himself so useful to David in the time of his
troubles (comp. 2 Sam. xv. 36). — "Adonijah  caught hold on
the horns of the altar" (51) ; that is, as I understand, the altar of burnt of
ferings, standing before the tabernacle on Mount Zion ; comp. 2 Sam. vi. 17.
* 1 Kings ii. 1 - 11.
VOL. III. 5

50 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.
sent by the hand of Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada ; and
he fell upon him that he died." The high-priest Abia
thar, one of Adonijah's most powerful adherents, was
sent into retirement at his estate at Anathoth, a few
miles from Jerusalem. " Thou art worthy of death,"
said the king to him, " but I will not at this time put
thee to death, because thou barest the ark of the Lord
God before David my father, and because thou hast
been afflicted in all wherein my father was afflicted."
On hearing of this, Joab took alarm, and " fled unto
the tabernacle of the Lord, and caught hold on the
horns of the altar." The sanctuary was violated by
Solomon's command. " Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada,
went up, and fell upon Joab, and slew him 
And the king put Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, in
his room over the host ; .and Zadok the priest did the
king put in the room of Abiathar." These more im
portant affairs transacted, the king turned his atten
tion to the doomed Shimei. He summoned him first
to Jerusalem, and bade him build a house there, and
never on peril of 'death depart from the city walls.
At the end of three years, Shimei was tempted to
make a journey to Gath in pursuit of two fugitive
slaves. His life, taken by the hand of Benaiah, im
mediately paid the forfeit of his indiscretion.*
* 1 Kings ii. 12-46. — "King Solomon answered and said unto his
mother, ' And why dost thou ask Abishag the Shunamite for Adonijah 1
Ask for him the kingdom also' " (22). Comp. 2 Sam. iii. 7 ; xii. 8 ; xvi. 21 ;
also, above, pp. 6, 27, and notes. Geddes thinks that Solomon had a further
reason for his irritation, and that Abishag the Shunamite was the Shu-
lamite of the Canticles (Cant. vi. 13). — "Solomon thrust out Abiathar
from being priest unto the Lord, that he might fulfil the word of the Lord,"
&c. (27) ; comp. I Sam. ii. 30, &c. Abiathar was descended from Eli in
the fourth generation. See 1 Sam. xiv. 3 ; xxii. 9, 20. — " Joab fled unto
the tabernacle of the Lord, and caught hold on the horns of the altar "
(28); comp. i. 50; also, above, p. 49, note. —"That thou mayest take
away the innocent blood which Joab shed" (31); in view of all the cir
cumstances, one cannot but suspect that the traditions, dictated by an age

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 51
Solomon espoused a daughter of the king of Egypt,
and brought her to his capital. Corrupted, it is
likely, by that prosperity which brought them under
the influence of foreign fashions, " the people sacri
ficed in high places," and the young king, though he
" loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his
father," himself took a part in those unauthorized ob
servances. Having gone to Gibeon for the purpose,
he had there a dream, in which God, in answer to his
prayer for the wisdom needful in his station, promised
to give him that, and distinguished honor and great -
in the interest of those who ruined him, have been unjust to Joab. Af
ter all that his enemies have reported to aftertimes, there appears reason ,
to attribute to him the character of a consistent and faithful, as well as
able, servant of his country. — "Zadok the priest did the king put in the
room of Abiathar" (35). By this authority it was well understood
that, before Zadok could be high-priest, it was necessary that the pre
vious incumbent should be removed. But, since early in the reign of David,
Zadok and Ahimelech, and afterwards Zadok and Abiathar, have been men
tioned from time to time, apparently as in joint possession of the chief-
priesthood. Comp. 2 Sam. viii. 17 ; xv. 29, 35 ; xx. 25. It is natural to
inquire what account is to be given of this statement, when the law evi
dently contemplated only one high-priest at a time. I answer, — 1. It may
very well have been a mere mistake of the compiler, who, writing at a dis
tant time, and knowing that Zadok and Abiathar were at this period persons
of great distinction in the sacerdotal order, and that each had somewhere
about the time been high-priest, erroneously supposed them to have enjoyed
the dignity together ; the uncertainty of his information on the subject ap
pears from 1 Kings iv. 4, compared with the express earlier statements in
ii. 27, 35. 2. Regularly there can be only one Pope at a time at the head
of the Romish Church ; but at different periods there have been rival
claims to the dignity, and so it may have been in the case of Abiathar and
Zadok. 3. Abiathar and Zadok appear to have been descended respec
tively from Phinehas and Eleazar, the two sons of Aaron ; to these fami
lies respectively the law itself assigned particular trusts (Numb. iv. 16, 28,
33) ; giving thereby to the head of each a peculiar responsibility and dis
tinction. In this sense they were associate chief-priests, though only one
was, strictly speaking, high-priest. Comp. 1 Chron. xxiv. 3, 4 ; comp. also
Luke iii. 2. — "Shimei arose, and saddled his ass, and went to Gath"
(40) ; perhaps indulging the hope of impunity, because, in going westward
from the city, he had not occasion to violate the command not to pass
" over the brook Kidron " (37) .

52 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.
ness also, if he would but walk in his father's steps,
keeping the Divine statutes and commandments. Ac
cepting the omen, he left the high place, and, returning
to Jerusalem, he " stood before the ark of the cove
nant of the Lord, and offered up burnt-offerings, and
offered peace-offerings, and made a feast to all his ser
vants." He signalized his youthful wisdom by an ex
pedient, through which, appealing to maternal affec
tion, he determined the parentage of a child ; " and ¦
all Israel  feared the king, for they saw that the
wisdom of God was in him to do judgment." *
A list of Solomon's chief officers in different depart
ments is next followed by an animated description, in
• general terms of panegyric, of the good old times
when " Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man un
der his vine and under his fig-tree," and of the mag
nificent monarch under whose sceptre they had en
joyed such prosperity. " Judah and Israel were many,
as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating
* 1 Kings iii. 1-28. — "The people sacrificed in high places, because
there was no house built," &c. (2). This is the first occurrence in the his
tory of a statement which will often present itself hereafter. (The text 1
Sam. ix. 12, is not an exception to this remark, for nay. should be
there rendered, not sacrifice, but banquet, which is the primitive meaning of
the word.) The sacrifices on high places, away from the one place of na
tional worship, whether tabernacle (Lev. xvii. 1-9) or temple (Deut. xii.
1-14), were violations of the law, and being invariably in the history con
demned as such, can by no means be assumed as proof that the law was
not yet in existence. The author of Chronicles (2 Chron. i. 3) is at pains
to put a gloss on this matter. — " The king went to Gibeon " (4) ; to He
bron, says Josephus (" Antiq. Jud." Lib. II. $ 1), with the frequent care
lessness of his trumpery history. — "I am but a little child ; I know not
how to go out, or come in " (7). Here is an anachronism, and a lapse in
the history, if Solomon is represented as still literally a child. But perhaps
the common explanation may be admitted, making the language an exag
gerated expression of humility in a young man. — " Thy son is the dead,
and my son is the living " (23). A parent might sell a child into slavery
(Ex. xxi. 7) ; this is the only apparent explanation of a story of a wo
man's wishing to obtain another's child by fraud.

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 53
and drinking, and making merry." In this perpetual
carnival, the wise king held a court for the resort of
the most distant nations. " There came of all people
to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the
earth, which had heard of his wisdom." " He was
wiser than all men " ; he penetrated deep into the se
crets of natural science, and he spake proverbs and
songs in vast numbers. He extended his patrimonial
dominions " from the river unto the land of the Phi
listines, and unto the border of Egypt,  and he
had peace on all sides round about him." To pro
vide for the luxurious consumption of his court, he
divided his whole realm into twelve purveyorships,
with an overseer to each, whose duty it was to furnish
a supply for the royal household one month in every
year, and to see it supplied daily with thirty oxen, a
hundred sheep, and game and other articles of diet in
proportion. This singular measure for consolidating
the kingdom, breaking down the individuality of the
tribes, with all its old and cherished associations, and
parcelling them out into new divisions, and all for the
sake of arrangements for the royal housekeeping, or
at best for the revenue, there is no sufficient evidence
for supposing to have been ever carried out or pro
jected. If it was, a political, much rather than a
mere economical object, must be supposed to have
been in contemplation ; the twelve jealous democracies
were to be broken down under a central despotism ;
and, with the free spirit which had been nursed by
their institutions, the usurpation might very naturally
be expected to lead to such a national schism as that
of the next reign.*
* 1 Kings iv. 1-34.— "The son of Hur," &c. (8, 9, 10, 11) ; the
compiler's want of information respecting the names of these four officers
is an example of the defective character of his materials. — " Thirty meas-
5*

54 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.
The peaceful and abundant prosperity of Solomon's
reign admitting of the execution of the design which
had been entertained by his father, to build a worthy
temple for the national worship, he applied for archi
tects and laborers to Hiram, king of Tyre, whose
friendship for David had been continued to himself.
The application was favorably received, and it was ar
ranged that Tyrian workmen should hew and prepare
fir and cedar timber, to be delivered at one of the
ports of Israel, and paid for, year by year, with corn
and oil, commodities for which the commercial state of
Hiram depended on supplies from abroad. Solomon
organized a body of thirty thousand men, of whom
ten thousand in rotation were always in service for a
month together in the mountainous forests of Leba
non, while stones where quarried and hewn for the
foundation, and a force of a hundred and fifty thou
sand more was engaged in the ruder labors of the
enterprise, the whole work being directed by three
thousand and three hundred overseers.*

ures of fine flour, and threescore measures of meal " (22). If, as has been
computed, this was sufficient daily provision for 33,000 persons (see Priest
ley's Notes, ad loc), or for 24,000 (Clerici Comment., ad loc), it is another
instance of the exaggeration of the writer, or of the legend which he fol
lowed. — " Forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thou
sand horsemen " (26) ; the extravagance of the first statement is not more
observable, than the disproportion between the two. — " He was wiser than
all men ; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda,
the sons of Mahol" (31). The names of Ethan and Heman appear in the
titles to Psalms Ixxxviii. and lxxxix. In 1 Chron. ii. 6, Ethan, Heman, Cal-
col, and Dara are sons of Zerah. There is also a " Heman a singer," the
son of Joel, Ethan the son of Kishi, and Ethan the son of Kushaiah (ibid.
vi. 33, 44; xv. 17). See, too, xxv. 1, 4, 5. — " He spake three thou
sand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five, and he spake of
trees," &c. (32, 33). This was not enough to satisfy Josephus. Accord
ing to him, Solomon composed more than a thousand treatises on lyric
poetry, and three thousand books of proverbs, besides certain works on the
art of magic (Ant., Lib. VIII. cap. 5).
* 1 Kings v. 1 - 18. — " David my father could not build an house ...

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 55
The buildings of Solomon's reign, especially his
temple and palace, were the chief permanent memo
rials of his power, and of the greatness of his re
sources ; and it is probable that the descriptions which
we have of them in this history are in all essential re
spects authentic and trustworthy, for they were stand
ing at the time of the author, four hundred years after
their erection,* and though we read of their being
plundered by the king of Egypt in the next reign to
Solomon's,-]- it is not related that at that or at any
time they had suffered any other violence. The model
and proportions of the Temple, properly so called, were
the same, except as to height, as those of the Taberna
cle constructed by Moses in the Exodus, the length
and breadth of the apartments of the Temple being,
however, twice as great. The size of the Temple was
inconsiderable, when compared with the consecrated
structures of other nations and times. Its length was
about a hundred and eight feet, its width thirty-six,
and its height fifty-four ; while the height and width
of the Tabernacle had been the same, a difference be
tween the two buildings naturally dictated by the dif
ferent stability of the materials of which they were
respectively constructed.
As in the Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies of the
Temple was a square room, and the Holy Place was a

for the wars which were about him," &c. (3). No such reason is related
to have been given by Nathan when he dissuaded the measure ; comp.
2 Sam. vii. 4, et seq. — " There is not among us any that can skill to hew
timber like unto the Sidonians " (6) ; the Sidonian artists were famous as
early as the time of Homer ; see Iliad, vi. 289 ; xxiii. 743. — " Adoniram was
over the levy " (14) ; comp. iv. 6. — " Solomon had threescore and ten thou
sand that bare burdens," &c. (15) ; the enormous extravagance of these
numbers, compared with the magnitude of the work, illustrates the charac
ter of the history. — " The stone-squarers " (18) ; rather, the people of Gab-
ala, who lived in the declivity of Lebanon ; comp. Josh. xiii. 5.
* 2 Kings xxv. 9.
\ 1 Kings xiv. 26.

56 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.
parallelogram, with a length equal to twice its breadth.
It had a porch thirty-six feet long, covering the whole
front of the house, and eighteen feet deep. The Holy
of Holies, notwithstanding the greater exterior height
of the Temple, was a cube, as in the Tabernacle, the
ceiling of that room only reaching two thirds of the
way to the roof. Attached to the outer side walls of
the edifice were three stories of chambers, the lowest
nine feet wide, the next about eleven, and the upper
most between twelve and thirteen, the projections
leaving space for rests for the timbers of the interior
apartment. The second and third of these ranges of
chambers were reached by winding staircases within,
and their whole height was twenty-seven feet, leaving
room above for rows of windows to light the Holy
Place. The stones for the edifice were hewn and ad
justed before they were brought to the spot, " so that
there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of
iron, heard in the house while it was in building."
Within, it was cased and finished " with beams and
boards of cedar," " carved with knops and open flow
ers ; all was cedar ; there was no stone seen," the floor
being laid " with planks of fir." Instead of the cur
tains, which in the Tabernacle had given admission to
the Holy Place and separated it from the Holy of Ho
lies, Solomon placed permanent partitions and doors of
olive-wood and fir, which, as well as " all the walls of
the house round about," were carved with " cherubims,
and palm-trees, and open flowers " ; and these, with the
cedar Altar of Incense in the Holy Place, and the
cherubim of olive-wood, figures eighteen feet high, in
the Holy of Holies, were " covered with gold fitted
upon the carved work." Lastly, the area, or court,
within which the Temple stood, was inclosed "with
three rows of hewed stone, and a row of cedar beams,"
instead of the hanging, which had served that pur-

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 57
pose to the Tabernacle. We read nothing here,
any more than in the description of the tabernacle in
Exodus, of any Court of the Women, or Court of the
Gentiles. These were later inventions. The whole
work had occupied seven years and- six months .*
Having provided for a splendid celebration of the
national worship, Solomon's next attention was given
to the erection of a palace of suitable magnificence for
himself. It was of considerably greater dimensions
than the temple, the length being a hundred and
eighty feet, and the breadth ninety. It consisted of
three stories, with cedar floors, on beams supported by
columns of cedar-wood, which appear to have given
to the structure its name of " the house of the forest
of Lebanon." There was a vestibule, also floored with
cedar, about fifty feet in depth, and of a length such as
to cover the front of the palace, which constituted
Solomon's hall of audience. His private apartments,
and those of his queen, the- daughter of the king of
Egypt, were of the like materials. The foundations
and walls of the palace were composed of hewn stones
of great size, part of them from fifteen to eighteen
feet in length. The whole was surrounded by a col
onnade, consisting of three ranges of stone pillars, and
one of timbers of cedar, similar to that which in
closed the area of the temple, f
* 1 Kings vi. 1-38. — " In the fourth year of Solomon's reign over
Israel" (1). In the fourth year of Solomon's reign he was but twenty-
two years old ; yet we have before read of two of his officers being hus
bands of his daughters (iv. 11-15). — " The word of the Lord came to Sol
omon, saying," &c. (11 - 13). The passage which thus interrupts the nar
rative, appears to be a reference to 2 Sam. vii. 13. — " He made a partition
by the chains of gold," &c. (21) ; literally, he closed up with golden chains.
I understand the meaning to be, that with such chains, instead of bars or
bolts, he fastened the doors (31) which gave entrance to the Holy of
Holies. f 1 Kings vii. 1-12. — "He built also," &c. (2); rather, so he built;
the palace which in the last verse Solomon is said to have finished, I take

58 1 KINGS I. 1.— XI. 43. [LECT.
The building of the palace occupied thirteen years.
After its completion, or during its progress, Solomon
turned his attention again to the Temple, and pro
ceeded to add some substantial decorations of great
cost, and to renew the apparatus for worship in a style
of far greater magnificence. In the first place, in front
of the western or principal entrance to the Temple,
were set up two brazen columns, forty-two feet high,
including the shafts and capitals, and about seven
feet -in diameter. The capitals, nine feet in height,
were ornamented with "nets of checker-work and
wreaths of chain- work," and sculptures of lily- work
and pomegranates, and over them an entablature of
" lily-work " seems to have connected the two.*
to be the same of which the description here begins  " The house of the
forest of Lebanon " (ibid.). I know not why the commentators should be
so much perplexed by this title. The palace was supported and divided into
aisles and apartments by rows of pillars of Lebanon cedar. In such num
ber they looked like a forest, and thus very naturally furnished a name for
the structure. — " The beams, that lay on forty-five pillars, fifteen in a row"
(3). The floors of the upper stories, then, were supported by three rows of
cedar pillars running lengthwise of the building, which pillars were twelve
feet apart in its length, and twenty-two in its width. To reconcile this with
the words "four rows of cedar pillars," in verse 2, I understand by the
four rows to be meant the four aisles, or intercolumniations, formed by the
two outer walls of stone, and the three ranges of cedar rafters within.
Since writing this, I observe that such was the understanding of the Vulgate
translator. — " The other pillars and the thick beam were before them " (6) .
I have seen no explanation of these words which satisfies me, and I have
none such to propose on my own part. aj>, however, rendered " the thick
beam," I suppose means a flight of steps, and I incline to think that
Dn,;!J)J?j7, "before them," should be understood to mean in front of them,
that is, of the people, in which case the sense would be, that the hall of
audience, and the steps ascending to it, were the parts of the palace which
presented themselves first to those who approached the building. — " Then
he made a porch for the throne," &c. (7). I would render, so he made,
understanding this porch to be the same as that mentioned in the preceding
verse. — " His house where he dwelt had another court within the porch "
&c. (8). The had is supplied by our translators. Rather, his private
apartment was, or constituted, a range of building around an area within.
* 1 Kings vii. 13 - 22. — " King Solomon sent, and fetched Hiram out of

XXXIX] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 59
In the Court of the Tabernacle had stood two ap
purtenances of the ritual of the place ; viz. the Altar
of Burnt-offerings and the Brazen Laver .* The great
altar we are not told that Solomon now renewed.
But the old Brazen Laver, for the ablutions of the
priests and other like uses, he superseded by a capa
cious vessel, called the Brazen Sea, and by ten lavers of
smaller size. The Brazen Sea was a circular vase, nine
feet high with its pedestal, and eighteen in diameter.
The metal of the bowl, " an hand breadth thick," was
elaborately ornamented with two rows of gourds in
relief, and " with flowers of lilies." It held " two
thousand baths," estimated at fifteen thousand gal
lons. The whole rested on twelve sculptured oxen,
three fronting towards each quarter of the compass.
The smaller lavers, of the same material, seven or
eight feet deep, and more than two feet and a half
in diameter at the top, each held three hundred gal
lons. They rested on brazen bases, between seven and
eight feet square, and about five feet high, adorned
with sculptures of lions, oxen, and cherubim, and palm-
trees with other devices, and each set upon four bra
zen wheels nearly three feet in diameter, and furnished
with as many props to keep them steady when at rest.
They stood five in a row oh each side of the temple,
while the. place of the Brazen Sea was on the south
side of the area before the eastern front, and that of
the great altar, it may be inferred, on the opposite
Tyre," &c. (13). The Tyrian citizen who superintended the decorations
of the temple, bore the same name with the Tyrian monarch, who provided
the materials and the workmen (comp. v. 1, &c). One is tempted to think
that tradition had made the one out of the other. — The names " Jachin "
and " Boaz" in verse 21, signifying respectively He shall establish, and In
it is strength, denoted the perpetuity of the Temple, and of the religion,
ritual, and institutions of which it was part.
* See Vol. I. p. 208.

60 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.
side of the same inclosure. Hiram founded other
utensils "of bright brass, in the plain of Jordan,
 in the clay ground between Succoth and Zar-
than." " They were exceeding many, neither was the
weight of the brass found out." Other articles of
the temple furniture were composed of a still more
precious material ; " the altar of gold, and the table
of gold, whereupon the shewbread was, and the candle
sticks of pure gold, five on the right side, and five
on the left, before the oracle, with the flowers, and
the lamps, and the tongs of gold, and the bowls, and
the snuffers, and the basins, and the spoons, and the
censers of pure gold, and the hinges of gold, both for
the doors of the inner house, the most holy place, and
for the doors of the house, to wit, of the Temple."
Lastly, what of the precious metals bequeathed by
his father Solomon had not employed upon the work,
he caused to be deposited in the temple for future
use.* Solomon dedicated the temple with a pomp worthy
of so momentous an occasion. He assembled all the
chief men from the several tribes at the capital, and
under their eye " the priests brought in the ark of
* 1 Kings vii. 23-51. — "The mouth of it, within the chapiter and
above, was a cubit" (31). "In the top of the base was there around
compass of half a cubit high" (35). We cannot, I suppose, obtain any
distinct images from this language. Even with the advantage of modern
terms of art, it is very difficult to convey an idea of architectural or me
chanical designs, without the aid of drawings. — " The altar of gold, and
the table of gold, whereupon the shewbread was" (48). See Vol. I. p.
207. — " The candlesticks of pure gold, five on the right side, and five on
the left, before the oracle " (49). The one great candlestick of the Taber
nacle, with seven branches (Vol. I. p. 207) , is not mentioned, but .that it was
part of the furniture of the last temple we know from the sculpture now to
be seen on one of the interior sides of Titus's triumphal arch at Rome. I
conceive we are to understand, that, besides the Great Candlestick, Solomon
furnished the Holy Place with ten of less size, just as he provided ten
smaller lavers for the Court, in addition to the principal one, the Molten Sea.

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 61
the covenant of the Lord unto his place, into the
oracle of the house, to the Most Holy Place, even
under the wings of the cherubims." Also, " the tab
ernacle of the congregation, and all the holy vessels
that were in the tabernacle, did the priests and the
Levites bring up," " out of the city of David, which
is Zion," while solemn sacrifices attended the move
ment of the procession. " And it came to pass, when
the priests were come out of the Holy Place, that the
cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests
could not stand to minister because of the cloud ; for
the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the
Lord."* Solomon, having seen that the transfer of the sym
bols of the Divine presence to their new receptacle was
rightly made, so that the Lord had taken possession
of " the thick darkness " wherein he had said he
would dwell, first " turned his face about, and blessed

* 1 Kings viii. 1-11. — " The men of Israel assembled themselves unto
King Solomon at the feast, in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh
month" (2) ; that is, the dedication took place at the annual Feast of Tab
ernacles (comp. Lev. xxiii. 34). — "They drew out the staves, 
and there they are unto this day " (8). These words have commonly been
thought to indicate that the writer copied them from a record of earlier
times, which he left unchanged. But they may have been original with
him. So long a composition as this history took time, and though not fin
ished till after the captivity, it may have been begun, and this portion of it
written, before that event, while the Temple was yet standing, and while
things were in the condition which the writer here describes. — "There
was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone," &c. (9). This does
not contradict Deut. xxxi. 26, where it is directed that the book of the law
shall be deposited beside the ark.' Hebrews ix. 4 is of no weight in the
case ; comp. Ex. xvi. 34 ; Numb. xvii. 10. — " The priests could not stand
to minister because of the cloud ; for the glory of the Lord had filled the
house of the Lord " (11). I do not know whether the writer had received
and intended to report this as an account of a miraculous Divine occupation
of the Temple, or as the natural effect of that cloud of incense which had
been raised in 'honor of the new presence of the Divinity. Comp. Ex. xl.
34 ; also Vol. I. p. 232.
VOL. III. 6

62 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.
all the congregation of Israel," congratulating them
on the completion of so important an enterprise. He
then " stood before the altar of the Lord, in the pres
ence of all the congregation of Israel," and uttered a
prayer of dedication, which, whether the record that
has been preserved for us is a true representation of
his words, or a composition of some later time, is
equally surprising and admirable as a token of the
conceptions of divinity, and the tone of religious sen
timent, which prevailed in such an age, among such a
people. Rising from his knees, he again addressed
the congregation, exhorting them to gratitude and
fidelity to their Divine Benefactor. The. day's solem
nities were concluded with a great banquet, " a sacri
fice of peace-offerings, two-and-twenty thousand oxen,
and an hundred and twenty ' thousand sheep." The
Tabernacle Feast was prolonged through double the
usual time ; and when it was over, and the people sep
arated, " they went unto their tents joyful and glad of
heart, for all the goodness that the Lord had done for
David his servant, and for Israel his people." *
After the completion of these great works, Solomon
had another dream, in which he was assured that the
Lord accepted the Temple that had been erected to his
worship, and would prosper him and establish his line,
as long as they should persevere in their loyalty to Je
hovah ; but that, should they apostatize to the service
of other gods, the people should be cut off from the
land, and the Temple should be desecrated and despised.
* 1 Kings viii. 12 - 66. — " Then spake Solomon, ' The Lord said, that he
would dwell in the thick darkness ' ; I have surely built thee an house to
dwell in, a settled place," &c. (13). That is, That secluded retreat which
thou inhabitedst in the movable Tabernacle (Lev. xvi. 2) I have now provided
for thee in a permanent abode. — "The same day did the king hallow the
middle of the court," &c. (64). That is, he occupied the whole area
with the sacrifices ; and the reason follows, " because the brazen altar
that was before the Lord was too little," &c.

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 63
In acknowledgment of the favors he had received from
Hiram, king of Tyre, Solomon gave to that prince
twenty cities in Galilee, which did not satisfy him; but
the disappointment did not prevent him from making
Solomon a further present of a hundred and twenty
talents of gold. Besides his works at Jerusalem, Sol
omon built several cities, as Tadmor in the desert, or
Palmyra, destined to power and fame under another
dynasty, and Gezer, on the site of a Canaanitish town,
taken by the king of Egypt, and presented to his
daughter as part of her dowry. The remnant of the
Canaanites within the Israelitish territory he reduced
to menial service, under the superintendence of stew
ards of the Hebrew race. He removed his Egyptian
consort from the palace built by David to another
erected for her use. He opened a commerce with the
eastern coast of Africa, in vessels built in ship-yards
at Ezion-geber, at the head of the northeasterly
branch of the Red Sea. Navigated with the assistance
of mariners sent by Hiram, " they came to Ophir, and
fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty
talents, and brought it to King Solomon." And as yet
he persevered in his religious fidelity, offering sacri
fices three times every year in the temple he had
reared to Jehovah.*

* 1 Kings ix. 1-28. — " King Solomon gave Hiram twjenty cities in the
land of Galilee" (11). Did Solomon in fact alienate to a pagan prince a
portion of the Holy Land, Jehovah's own inheritance, or is this an error in
the history! — " He called them the land of Cabul " (13). A city in Gal
ilee of this name is mentioned in Joshua xix. 27. I suppose it was a poor
place, and that the meaning of Hiram's words is, that the cities Solomon
had given him were like it. — " Hiram sent to the king sixscore talents of
gold" (14); more than twenty-nine millions of dollars. — "These were
the chief of the officers that were over Solomon's work, five hundred and
fifty " (23). Compare v. 16, where they are said to have been thirty-three
hundred in number. — "Three times in a year did Solomon offer," &c.
(25) ; that is, apparently, at the three great festivals. — " So he finished the

64 1 KINGS I. 1. — XI. 43. [LECT.
The fame of Solomon's greatness and personal
accomplishments attracted visitors from all parts of
the world. Among them came the queen of Sheba,
a district in Arabia, accompanied by a pompous
train, and bringing presents of great value, consist
ing of gold, precious stones, and spices. The wis
dom and magnificence of the king more than ful
filled her highly raised expectations, and she departed
with blessings on the Lord who had so exalted him,
and on the happy people who rejoiced in his sway.
The fleet from Ophir brought in precious stones and
almug-trees, of which latter material the king caused
to be made pillars for the temple and palace, and in
struments for the musicians. Besides what he received
from imposts on trade and from various tributary
princes, the annual receipt into his treasury amounted
to six hundred and sixty-six golden talents. With two
hundred targets of beaten gold of six hundred shekels
each, and three hundred shields, each made of three
pounds of the same metal, he ornamented the walls
of his palace. His throne was of ivory, inlaid with
gold ; two sculptured lions stood beside it, and two on
each of the steps by which it was approached. The
drinking-vessels and all other utensils of his palace
were of gold ; " none were of silver ; it was nothing
accounted of in the days of Solomon." " Once in
three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold,
and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks." The
visitors that thronged to him " brought every man his

house " (ibid.) ; rather, when he had finished it. — " They came to Ophir "
(28). It is impossible to identify the country called by this name; very
probably its application was as vague as that of our phrase, the Indies. —
"Gold, four hundred and twenty talents" (ibid.); equal to more than a
hundred millions of dollars. On the data furnished by this writer, Prideaux
estimates the treasures left by David to his son at eight hundred millions of
pounds sterling, nearly equal to the present national debt of England.

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 65
present." A lucrative commerce was carried on with
Egypt in horses, chariots, and linen. " And the king
made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones." The reader
sees in this description the exaggerations of one, who,
writing at a time of public penury and depression,
looks back with a doating pride to the period of his
nation's greatness.*
But the virtue of this magnificent prince was not
proof against the seductions of the thousand foreign
women by whom he was surrounded. "It came to
pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned
away his heart after other gods " ; and he built " an
high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in
the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the
abomination of the children of Ammon ; and likewise
did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense,
and sacrificed unto their gods." Displeased by his
* 1 Kings x. 1 - 29. — "The queen of Sheba " (1) ; probably some part
of Arabia (comp. Gen. x. 7, 28 ; xxv. 3 ; Matt. xii. 42 ; Luke xi. 31) ;
but nothing is certainly known of its position. — "Concerning the name of
the Lord " (ibid.). For DBO [concerning the name), the Syriac, Septuagint,
and Arabic translators read DKh (and the name), which gives abetter sense.
— " The king had at sea a navy of Tharshish " (22). This name has been
commonly thought to have belonged to a part of Spain, and from Jonah i. 3,
it appears to have denoted some place which could be reached by sea from
Joppa on the Mediterranean. But Spain is not known ever to have pro
duced ivory or apes, and from 2 Chron. xx. 36, it appears that Tarshish
was also accessible to ships sailing from Ezion-geber, at the head of the
Red Sea. It seems to follow, either that there were two places, one at the
west, the other at the south, which bore the name, or else that it was a
kind of generic name for any distant country. — "He had a thousand and
four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen " (26) ; " he had forty
thousand stalls of horses for his chariots," according to iv. 26. — " Solomon
had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn" (28) ; there appears to
be no authority for this interpretation of the word npn ; the clause should
probably he rendered, " the king's merchants brought a company (of horses)
for a price (or for wages)." — " For all the kings of the Hittites, and for the
kings of Syria " (29) ; that is, the trade with Egypt in horses was not only
for the supply of the Israelites, but a further traffic was carried on, through
the country, with the tribes upon its opposite borders.
6*

66 1 KINGS 1. 1. - XI. 43. [LECT.
disloyalty, the Lord threatened to depose his line from
the throne of Israel, permitting it, however, to retain
the allegiance of one tribe, and suspending the sen
tence during Solomon's life, for the sake of the merits
of the faithful David.
" The Lord stirred up adversaries unto Solomon,"
Hadad, Rezon, and Jeroboam. Hadad, of the royal
race of Edom, had escaped, when a child, from the
bloody slaughter of his race by Joab, and found a
refuge at the court of the Egyptian king. He mar
ried the sister of the queen, and had a son who was
brought up in the royal family. Notwithstanding the
advantages which he thus possessed, when he heard of
the death of David and Joab, he insisted on returning
to his own country; but here his history abruptly
ends, without any information concerning the way in
which his hostility to Solomon was proved. Rezon
was a Syrian adventurer, who, in the event of a suc
cessful insurrection, had established a sort of royalty
at Damascus. That such a person should be men
tioned as a formidable adversary to a prince described
as possessing such wealth and power as Solomon, is
another instance of the incompleteness and uncer
tainty of the narrative. Jeroboam, of the tribe of
Ephraim, had been appointed by Solomon to be super
intendent of the laborers of his own tribe and that of
Manasseh on the new buildings at Jerusalem. A con
ference with the prophet Ahijah inspired him with
more ambitious thoughts. One day, as they met
without the walls of the city, Ahijah tore in twelve
pieces a new garment with which one or the other was
clothed, and giving ten to Jeroboam, assured him that,
for the idolatries of the king and the people, the gov
ernment of ten tribes should, after the death of Solo-.
mon, be transferred to himself, and be continued in

XXXIX.] THE TIME OF SOLOMON. 67
his line on the same conditions as those on which it
had been promised to David. Informed of this trans
action, or suspecting some such intrigue, Solomon
sought to kill Jeroboam, who, however, escaped into
Egypt, and remained there till the king's death. Af
ter a reign of forty years, " Solomon slept with his
fathers, and was buried in the city of David his father;
and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead." *
* 1 Kings xi. 1-43. —"When Solomon was old" (4); but, if he
came to the throne at eighteen years of age, he was but fifty-eight at his
death (comp. 42). — " Solomon went after Ashtoreth," &c. (5). Plow he
did this is specified in the following verses: "Then did Solomon build an
high place for Chemosh  And likewise did he for all his strange
wives, whichburnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods." It does not appear
that the historian meant to charge Solomon with worshipping idols him
self, or with any thing beyond the constructive idolatry of allowing and pro
viding for the idolatry of his foreign wives. — " Molech, the abomination of
the children of Ammon " (7) ; that is, their abominable idol. — "I will give
one tribe to thy son " (13) ; the tribe of Benjamin continued to adhere to
the fortunes of the house of Solomon, but because of its inferiority of num
bers, it is here treated as but an appendage of that of Judah. — " After he
had smitten every male in Edom " (15) ; comp. 2 Sam. viii. 14 ; Psalm lx.
1. — " He gathered men unto him, and became captain over a band " (24) ;
Dean Prideaux (" Connection," &c, Part I. Book 1) considers this to
have been the foundation of the kingdom of Syria. — "Solomon reigned
in Jerusalem over all Israel" (42); which none of his posterity did. —
" Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead " (43). So imperfect is the his
tory, that, with all Solomon's wives, Rehoboam is the only child of his who
is mentioned.

68 1 KINGS XII. 1.- XXII. 53. [LECT.

LECTURE XL.
THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA.
1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53.
Condition of Neighbouring Nations at this Period. — Date of the
Building of the Temple. — Want of Means for determining the.
Time of thf. Origin of the Human Race. — That Event more re
mote than is commonly supposed. — Egypt. — Idum.ea. — Assyria.
— Phoenicia. — Syria. — Accession of Rehoboam. — Revolt of the
.Ten Tribes, and Establishment- of the Kingdom of Israel, under
Jeroboam. — Institutions of Worship in the Northern Kingdom-
— Messages of a Prophet, and accompanying Prodigies. — Cap
ture of Jerusalem by Shishak, King of Egypt. — Death of Jero
boam, and of Rehoboam. — Reigns of Abijam, Asa, and Jehosha
phat, in Judah ; of Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Omri, Ahab, Zimri,
and Ahaziah, in Israel. — Wars with Syria. — Progress of Ir-
religion, especially in Israel. — Prodigies related of Elijah and
other Prophets. — Visions of Micaiah.
In our survey of the Jewish records, we have arrived
at a period, from which the history of the people has
more connection than in earlier times with that of
other ancient nations, more or less known to us
through the profane writers. It will contribute to a
satisfactory view of some of the events of which we
are presently to read, to bear in mind a few facts
concerning the condition of the principal states
which bordered on the territory of the Jews, or which
from other causes came into political relations with
them. The method of calculation by which the foundation
of Solomon's temple is referred to the year 1012 be-

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 69
fore Christ has been already explained.* With what
date in the history of the earth, or of its human in
habitants, this corresponds, we do not know. If the
views formerly presented concerning the book of Gen
esis are correct, it follows that no aid whatever can be
obtained from that treatise in fixing the period of the
Creation, or of what is called the Universal Deluge.
If we abandon this resource, Ave have no other. In
fact, we possess no means of constructing a chronology
founded upon the date of the beginning of the race
of man. We know nothing about that date, except
by very vague approximation, the best inferences in
respect to it being drawn from sources quite different
from that of the Mosaic books.
On the one hand, that the creation of man belongs
to the latest period in the series of geological trans
formations of our planet appears from the fact, that
no fossil human remains have been found in any of
the earlier formations. On the other hand, sufficient
indications show that a much longer time than has
commonly been supposed must have elapsed between
the creation of the first man and the dawn of authen
tic history. The dispersion of men over distant re
gions of the. globe, the inventions in art and discov
eries in science, and the various arrangements and ac
commodations of social life, which appear with the
first glimpses of human condition that history pre
sents, seem to require much more time to bring them
from their feeble beginnings to such a maturity, than
the score or two of centuries which the common reck
oning allows. The great diversity of languages, dif
fering so widely both in their roots and in grammati
cal construction, and the physiological varieties of the

* Vol. II. pp. 130, 131.

70 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
different races, present further objections to the theory
of a recent creation of mankind, provided one sup
poses at the same time that the whole race sprang
from a single pair, — an opinion, however, which rests
mainly on those two ancient fragments, incorporated
by Moses into the beginning of his first book, and, as
I conceive, so used by him without any intention to
express so much as an opinion of his own upon the
subject. The first appearance of man upon this planet
seems, from such evidence as we have, to have be
longed to the same period with that of the domestic
animals who have been made to serve his uses, and of
the wild animals upon which he has made war for his
security or for his supplies. How many ages inter
vened between that creation and the dawn of authen
tic history, — how many human generations came
and passed away before human society was sufficiently
consolidated to furnish materials for any record, and
before inventions in art and permanent domestic and
political relations had provided the means of preserv
ing any memory of the past by record or tradition,
— this is a question on which we have only to confess
our ignorance. Nothing can be plainer than that
Egypt and the countries of the East could not have
. been in the advanced condition in which Abraham is
represented to have seen them, within four or five
hundred years after an annihilating deluge had swept
over the globe, and a new cycle in human things had
begun. The furthest limit of any thing that can be called
history is to be found somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty centuries before Christ, in the reign of the
Egyptian king named Menes ; and the first glimpse
we have of the condition of that people presents them

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 71
as already advanced in the arts of civilized life, and in
the security and comforts of a social state. Egypt con
tinued to be a flourishing monarchy through the
whole period of Jewish independence, and down to its
disastrous war with the Persians, in the year 525 be
fore Christ.
Edom, or Idumaea, was a territory lying southwest
of the Holy Land, on the eastern confine of Egypt.
Its inhabitants, who traced their parentage to Esau,
the elder son of Isaac, constituted an independent
nation before the time of the Exodus from Egypt.
Subjugated, as we have seen, by David, they revolted
from Solomon. The little of their history which sur
vives presents no remarkable persons or events. The
recent examinations, by travellers, of the remains of
their capital, Petra, have given unexpected confirma
tion to the ancient representations of its consequence
and wealth.
Of the history of the ancient, or first Assyrian em
pire, extending over the territory on the east of Judea,
along the banks of the Asiatic rivers Tigris and Eu
phrates, the first traces appear about the year 2200
before our era.* Its capitals were Nineveh on the for
mer river, and Babylon on the latter. It appears to
have been at a period not far from that of the founda-
1 tion of the first Assyrian monarchy, that Abraham em
igrated from that country into Canaan ; and one .may
conjecture that the political revolution which was go
ing on may have had an influence in determining the
* According to the fragments of Ctesias preserved by Diodorus Siculus,
there were 1306 years from the accession of Ninus to the death of Sar
danapalus, in 876 B. C. Strabo, Abydenus, and other writers, adopt this
date. Eusebius allows 1240 years between Ninus and Sardanapalus, and
places the death of the latter in 819 B. C. For a learned investigation of
the Assyrian chronology, with full references to the authorities above men
tioned, and others, see Clinton's " Fasti Hellenici," Vol. I. pp. 263-283.

72 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
time of his departure. This empire had never any po
litical relations with the Jewish kings. It survived
by a century or two the erection of Solomon's temple,
when, in the reign of its luxurious monarch, Sar
danapalus, it was overthrown by the arms of Arbaces,
governor of Media, one of its provinces ; and its terri
tory was thenceforward divided into modern Assyria,
embracing the northern part of the territory, Chal
dea or Babylon, embracing the southern portion, and
bounding on the Persian Gulf, and Media, further
to the east, south of the Caspian Sea, and north of
Persia.* There is no more interesting problem in ancient
history than that of the Phoenician power and civili
zation. The Phoenicians, the great commercial people
of early times, are not called in Scripture by this name,
but by the name of Canaanites. Their language, as
we gather it from hints in the Pentateuch,! indicates
them to have been of Asiatic origin, though their
seaports may have received Egyptian colonists. They
were dispossessed of their interior country by the
victories of Joshua, and were thenceforward confined
to a narrow strip of coast along the Mediterranean
Sea, making the western border of the Israelites. This
was, however, only the central seat of their em
pire, which, like the Athenian, the Venetian, and the
English, in more recent times, consisted in great part
of commercial colonies. Sidon, one of their chief
cities, was so ancient as to have been mentioned by
Homer, who refers to its extensive trade, and the skill
and expertness of its artisans. $ Tyre appears not
* For a mass of curious learning relating to the ancient Chaldee history,
the reader may consult a treatise by A. L. Schlozer, in Eichhorn's '' Reper-
torium," Th. VIII. § 113.
f Comp. Vol. I. p. 6.
% Iliad, vi. 289 ; xxiii. 743 ; Odyss. xv. 424.

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 73
to have been so old* It was Cadmus, a Phoenician,
who, five hundred years before the foundation of the
Jewish temple, is said to have carried letters into
Greece. It was Dido, a Phoenician, who, a hundred
and fifty years after Solomon, is said to have led a
colony to Carthage. The Phoenician navigators, in
vessels constructed from the forests of Mount Leba
non, explored the Mediterranean Sea, planted facto
ries and settlements on its islands and coasts, pene
trated to the ocean through the Straits of Gibraltar,
visited Gaul, Britain, and the Baltic, and are even
believed, on the authority of Herodotus, j" to have
circumnavigated the continent of Africa, embarking
¦ at the ports of the Elanitic Gulf, and finishing their
three years' voyage at the mouth of the Nile. They
wrought and coined the metals of Spain. They im
ported ivory and precious stones from Africa. The
Phoenician stuffs, and the Tyrian purple dye, were
famous through the world. How much of science,
culture, and social order and welfare, such striking
facts involved, can never be definitely known, for
the nation which diffused and perhaps invented let
ters has left its history to be transmitted in only a
few loose fragments by foreign hands.
The country of Syria, or Aram, lay to the north of
Palestine, between the Mediterranean on the west,
and, on the east, the Euphrates, which separated it
from Assyria. Till seven hundred years after Solo
mon, we know almost nothing of it except from
Scripture. We have already seen that, like Idumsea
at the south, it was overrun by David, and revolted
successfully against his son.
* Isaiah (xxiii. 12) calls it the " daughter of Zidon," but perhaps he refers
only to the island Tyre, which was more modern than that on the mainland.
f Lib. iv. § 42.
VOL. III. 7

74 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
We return to the history of the kingdom of Israel.
The successor of Solomon was his son Rehoboam.
Suspicious of his disposition or capacity to redress
the disorders of the state, or feeling themselves ripe
for a revolt which should place the remedy within
their own control, a dissatisfied portion of the people
invited Jeroboam to return from his exile in Egypt.
Rehoboam having gone to Shechem to hold his first
court and receive the homage of his subjects, Jero
boam presented himself before him at their head,
soliciting in their name relief from the heavy impo
sitions of the late reign. Rehoboam promised to give
them another audience at the end of three days, and
make known his purpose. Meanwhile he conferred
first with the old counsellors of his father, who ad
vised him to conciliate the good-will of the people
by a respectful deportment and a compliance with
their wishes, and then with his young courtly com
panions, whose counsel was to spurn the popular
discontent, and by one bold stroke establish a des
potic authority. He followed the advice which was
most acceptable to his weak, rash, and selfish char
acter, and the consequence was a rupture of the unity
of the Jewish nation, which was never healed. The
ten northern tribes stoned to death a collector of trib
ute sent among them by Rehoboam, drove the prince
himself from their borders, and established an inde
pendent monarchy, with Jeroboam for their king. Re
hoboam levied a large army from the two tribes which
maintained their allegiance to him, and would have
proceeded to reduce the revolt by force, but the re
monstrances of the prophet Shemaiah dissuaded him
from the attempt.
Jeroboam established his royal seats at Shechem,
within the confines of the tribe of Ephraim, and Pe-

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 75
nuel, a city rebuilt by. him on the site of one more an
cient, said to have been destroyed by Gideon,* within
the territory of Gad, beyond the Jordan. Appre
hending that his government would possess but a pre
carious independence, so long as the people should
continue to resort to the temple at Jerusalem, he
proceeded to make provision for a separate worship.
%He "made two calves of gold," designed apparently
to be in imitation of the two cherubim over the
mercy-seat, " and he set the one in Bethel, and the
other put he in Dan," cities at the southern and
northern extremities of his dominions. " And he made
an house of high places, and made priests of the low
est of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.
And Jeroboam ordained a feast, in the eighth month,
on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast
that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar (so did
he in Bethel), sacrificing unto the calves that he had
made ; and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high
places which he had made."f
* Judges viii. 17.
f 1 Kings xii. 1-33. — " That he might perform his saying, which the
Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite " (15) ; comp. 1 Kings xi. 31. —
" What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son
of Jesse " (16). This is no suddenly excited feeling, but an expression
of the ancient jealousy between the descendants of Judah and Joseph.
Comp. 2 Sam. xix. 43; also Vol. I. p. 314, Vol. II. p. 121.— "There
was none that followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only"
(20) ; but in the kingdom subject to the dynasty of David was certainly
included the tribe of Benjamin (comp. 21, 23), and probably the remnant
of the decayed -race of Simeon, and part, at least, of the southern territory
of Dan, which also lay contiguous to Judah on the west. — "Behold thy
gods, 0 Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (28) ;
comp. Vol. I. pp. 215-220. There is no reason to suppose that Jeroboam
meant to present to the people images of two divinities for their religious
homage. The images were set up in different places, and each, like
the golden calf of Aaron, was a symbolical representation of the one Je
hovah, " who had brought them up." Also, had the worship of any other
divinity than Jehovah been designed, there could have been no ground for the

76 1 KINGS XII. 1.- XXII. 53. [LECT.
The rest of the little which is preserved of the
history of the first monarch of Israel (as we are hence
forward to denominate the northern kingdom, in dis
tinction from that of Judah, the southern) relates
to the troubles understood to have been brought upon
him by his profanations of the national worship. The
writer recites two fragments of history of just that
description that are likely to have come down to#
his day in the form of popular legends. According
to one, while the first of the apostate line of kings
of Israel was offering on his sacrilegious altar at
Bethel, there came a divine messenger out of the
territory of Judah, who announced to him that at
a future time a descendant of David, named Josiah,
should desecrate that altar by offering its priests,
and burning their bones, upon it ; at the same time
proving his commission by declaring that the altar
should forthwith be broken and the ashes in it be
scattered, which sign immediately took place. The
incensed king ordered him to be seized, but his hand,
raised in a gesture of command, was immediately
withered, and was only restored through the inter
cession of " the man of God." The king now en
treated him to accept his hospitality, and other valu-
complaint (31) that "the sons of Levi " were not chosen for the priests,
for no other worship than Jehovah's ought or would the sons of Levi have
conducted. — " The people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan"
(30). Why is their going to Dan reproved, more than to Bethel? I have
seen no explanation of this, and the versions present no diversity of text.
I propose the following. The people strayed away from' the divinely ap
pointed seat of worship at Jerusalem, so as to forsake it for even so distant
a place as Dan. — " Jeroboam ordained- a feast in the eighth month, on the
fifteenth day of the month " (32). This was a month later (comp. Lev.
xxiii. 39) than the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, for which it was designed
to be a substitute. This feast was celebrated at the close of the vintage,
which, from the difference of climate, would be somewhat later in the north
ern kingdom. — " He offered upon the altar, and burned incense" (33);
rather, sacrifices, oblations, of whatever kind.

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 77
able tokens of his respect and gratitude; but the
prophet, agreeably to Divine directions which he de
clared himself to have received, declined them, and set
out on his journey homewards by a different route
from that by which he had come.
" An old prophet " dwelling in Bethel heard from
his sons of these transactions, and, inquiring the way
which the stranger had taken, followed and overtook
him, and persuaded him to return for refreshment to
his house, under the false pretence of having received
directions through an angel to that effect. But, while
they were feasting, the Bethel prophet himself received
a Divine direction to inform his guest, that, because
of his disobedience, he should not return to his home
alive, nor his body be buried in his father's sepulchre.
Accordingly, " a lion met him by the way, and slew
him ; and his carcass was cast in the way, and the ass
stood by it ; the lion also stood by the carcass."
When travellers who saw this reported it to the
Bethel prophet, he caused his ass to be saddled, and,
going to the place, recovered the body, and buried it
in his own grave, directing his children, when he
should die, to lay his own bones there, and declaring
that the denunciation which had been uttered against
Jeroboam's sacrilege should assuredly be fulfilled. If
the knowledge of these transactions was spread
abroad, it had no effect upon the king. He " re
turned not from his evil way, but made again of the
lowest of the people priests of the high places." *
* 1 Kings xiii. 1-34. — "So was it charged me by the word of the
Lord, saying, ' Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same
way ' " (9) ; it is impossible to be sure, as to all parts, that one gets the
meaning originally attached to this incoherent narrative ; but the force of
this direction seems to be that the man of God was to refuse the hospitality
of idolaters, and that he was to change his way in returning, to lessen the
danger of being intercepted. — " He lied unto him " (18) ; and the motives
7#

78 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
His son Abijah fell sick. He bade his wife dis
guise herself, and go to inquire at Shiloh what his
fate should be, of Ahijah the prophet, — the same who
had first nursed the aspiring thoughts of Jeroboam.
Ahijah was blind "by reason of his age"; but the
Lord had told him that the queen of Israel was on her
way to his dwelling, and, as she crossed his thresh-
hold, he greeted her by name. Without waiting to
hear her errand, he told her that her husband's idol
atrous courses would be visited with sudden and sig
nal punishment; that the line of his male descend
ants should perish miserably, and want even honor
able burial ; that his people should be subjugated, and
driven into exile ; and that the child for whom his
paternal solicitude was now excited should expire at
the very moment when its mother's returning steps
should pass the city gate. " The child died," as was
foretold ; and, exempted so far from the doom of the
rest of Jeroboam's line, " because in him there was
found some good thing toward the Lord God of Is
rael," " they buried him, and all Israel mourned for
him." Jeroboam died after a reign of twenty-two
years, and his son Nadab succeeded to the throne.
of the deception are not explained. One is tempted to think that there may
have been a foundation for the story of this kind : that a man from Judah,
full of religious zeal, had irritated the king by denunciations of his sacrile
gious proceedings ; that the Bethel prophet was an agent of the king to en
trap him into a delay, contrary to what he had declared to be his duty and
his purpose, which accordingly would seem to justify any disaster he might
meet with ; that he was waylaid and put to death on his return by the
king's orders, in order to reassure the people, who would be inclined to
discredit his declarations, when they learned his doom, and that it had been
brought about by unfaithfulness lo what he had affirmed to be his errand.
But it is as well to own that the materials are insufficient for the con
struction of any satisfactory hypothesis. There was probably some founda
tion in fact, like what has been suggested, from which the story by repetition
and additions took its present shape, as other legends do. — " The lion had
not eaten the carcass, nor torn the ass" (28); the inference being that it
was divinely sent only to slay the faithless prophet.

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 79
Rehoboam, who had begun to reign at the age of
forty-one years, died before Jeroboam, having reigned
only seventeen years, during which period the two
kingdoms were at perpetual war. In the kingdom of
Judah, too, during his time, idolatrous practices and
abominable immoralities prevailed. Early in Reho-
boam's reign, Jerusalem was assaulted and spoiled by
Shishak, king of Egypt. The temple and the royal
palace were rifled of their treasures ; and, instead of
the golden shields of his father, the pomp of Reho
boam was reduced to a mock display of shields of
brass, which were borne before him by his guards
when he visited the temple, and then replaced in their
armory. He was succeeded by his son Abijam.*

* 1 Kings xiv. 1-31. — " Take with thee ten loaves," &c. (3) ; a mod
erate present, suitable to a person in common life. — " Him that is shut up
and left in Israel" (10); the meaning is, I think, bondman and freeman
alike. — "But what? Even now" (14). A rather striking instance of the
readiness with which our translators not seldom put down English nonsense,
when at a loss for the Hebrew sense. The force of the words probably is,
What if all this should forthwith befall ? — " Rehoboam was forty and one
years old when he began to reign" (21). So, too, say all the ancient ver
sions. Accordingly, he must have been born a year before his father Solo
mon succeeded to the throne, for Solomon reigned forty years (comp. xi.
42). But Solomon was but a youth at the time of his accession (comp. iii.
7) ; David, during his lifetime, would hardly have allowed his heir-appar
ent to marry that Ammonitish mother of Rehoboam (xiv. 21, 31) who be
longed to an idolatrous race on which he had executed the bloodiest ven
geance (2 Sam. xii. 31) ; and the history elsewhere ( 1 Kings xi. 1) places the
attachment of Solomon to Ammonitish women in a late period of his reign.
But. of what avail to attempt to reconcile such contradictions? Under the
circumstances of the compilation of the book, they are to be looked for.
The simple truth is, that the history, derived from different and remote
sources, is inaccurate, and inconsistent in its parts. — "Shishak, king of
Egypt, came up against Jerusalem" (25). This is the first instance of a
king of Egypt being called in Scripture by his proper name, Pharaoh being
the name of the office or the dynasty. It is also, I think, the first instance
of the mention of an Egyptian king whom we are as yet able to identify.
The attempts which, with the aid of the late discoveries in the interpreta
tion of the Egyptian monuments, have been made to that end in relation to
the six Pharaohs mentioned in earlier parts of the history, (viz. in Gen. xii.

80 1 KINGS XII. 1.- XXII. 53. [LECT.
Abijam's short reign of three years was no better
than his father's. But it is not related to have been
marked by any great public disaster, though the hos
tilities with Israel continued. And the writer says
that " for David's sake did the Lord his God give him a
lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to
establish Jerusalem, because David did that which was
right in the eyes of the Lord." His son Asa, a much
better man and monarch than himself, succeeded him,
and reigned forty-one years. " He took away the
Sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols
that his fathers had made." He degraded the queen
mother from her rank, because of her idolatrous prac-

14-20; xxxvii. 36; Ex. i. 11 ; v. 1; and 1 Kings ix. 16; xi. 18,)
appear to me to have been unsuccessful. The conjecture of Archbishop
Usher, that the Shishak of the passage before us (comp. 1 Kings xi. 40) was
the same as the Sesonchis of the Greeks, has recently received remarkable
corroboration. " Upon one of the colonnades which adorn the first court
of the palace of Karnac at Thebes, two royal legends are inscribed in car
touches. The first expresses the surname, Approved by the Sun [Amon-mai
Sheshonk] ; the second, entirely phonetic, reads thus, dear to Ammon, She-
shonk  A recent discovery made by Champollion, in the land of
Egypt itself, removes all doubt upon the subject. ' In the wonderful palace
[that of Karnak] I saw,' says he, 'Sesonchis dragging at the feet of the
Theban Trinity, Ammon, and Mouth, and Kons, the chiefs of more than
thirty vanquished nations, among which I found, written in letters at full
length, Ioudahamalek, the kingdom of the Jews, or of Judah.' 
According to the calculations of Champollion Figeac, it was in the year
971 that Sesonchis, chief of the twenty-second dynasty, mounted the throne
of the Pharaohs." (Greppo's " Essay on the Hieroglyphic System of M.
Champollion," &c, in Stuart's translation, pp. 118, 119.) According to the
common Biblical chronology, it was in the year 971 that Shishak invaded Ju
dea. The translation from which I have quoted reads " the year 791 " ; this I
take to be an error of the press, but I have neither the original work of Grep-
po, nor that of Champollion Figeac, at hand, to refer to. There is no reason
whatever for confounding this Shishak with Sesostris, who, according to the
little knowledge we have of him, was earlier by several centuries. 
"There was war between Reboboam and Jeroboam all their days " (30).
Yet we read of no military operations whatever ; and we read, on the other
hand (xii. 24), that, when Rehoboam would have made war, he was forbid
den, and desisted.

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 81
tices, and burned the image which she had caused to
be set up in a grove. And he enriched the temple
with golden and silver vessels, dedicated by himself
and by his father.
The war with Israel continued through Asa's reign,
a period of nearly half a century. Nadab, the son of
the first Israelitish king, followed in his father's evil
steps, and, at the end of two years, while employed in
the siege of Gibbethon, a Philistine city, he fell a vic
tim to a successful conspiracy, and the throne was
seized by Baasha, the son of Ahijah, of the tribe of Is-
sachar, who, with a merciless determination, proceeded
to extirpate every branch of the royal house. He too
" walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin
wherewith he made Israel to sin." His wicked reign
lasted twenty-four years. Iii carrying on his war with
Asa, he undertook to fortify a place called Ramah, six
or eight miles from Jerusalem, in order to control the
communication between that city and the north. To
counteract his plan, Asa sought an alliance with Ben-
hadad, king of Syria. He sent an embassy to Damas
cus, the capital of that prince, reminding him of the
friendly relations between their ancestors, and bear
ing to him rich presents of " all the silver and the
gold that were left in the treasures of the house of the
Lord, and the treasures of the king's house." An at
tack of Benhadad's forces on the northern region of
Israel compelled Baasha to discontinue his proceed
ings at the south. Asa dismantled Ramah, and with
its materials built Geba and Mizpah in the tribe of
Benjamin. He died after an infirm old age, and was
succeeded by his son Jehoshaphat.*
* 1 Kings xv. 1-34. — "There was war between Rehoboam and Jer
oboam," &c. (6). This verse, which is but a repetition of xiv. 30, seems
to have got out of place ; for the history of Rehoboam's reign was closed

82 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
Jehu, the son of Hanani, had been charged with a
message to Baasha from the Lord, similar to that which
had been delivered to Jeroboam by Ahijah. The
threat was fulfilled against Elah, Baasha's son and
successor. He had reigned but two years, when he
was assassinated at a banquet by one of his officers,
Zimri, who retained the usurped power only long
enough to cut off all Baasha's family and retainers, and
fulfil the menace of Jehu. At the end of a week, in
telligence of these transactions having been brought
to the Israelitish army, which was besieging the Phi
listines in Gibbethon, just as it had been twenty-four
years before at the time of the conspiracy of Baasha,
it moved to Tirzah, under the command of Omri,
against Zimri, who, despairing of a successful defence
of the city, set fire to the royal palace, and perished in
the flames. An attempt to organize, under one Tibni,
an opposition to Omri, was overpowered, and he con
tinued to reign over Israel ten years. At the end of
six, he established his capital city at Samaria, having
bought the site for the purpose of one Shemer. His
government was stained with the vicious indulgences
of the preceding reigns.
Ahab, his son, succeeded him, and, in his reign of
twenty-two years, " did evil in the sight of the Lord
above all that were before him " ; for " he took to
wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the

in the last chapter, and we are now upon that of his son. — " His mother's
name was Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom " (10); but the same is said
of Abijam, his father (2) ; probably the traditions varied on that point. —
" Asa sent them to Benhadad, the son of Tabrimon, the son of Hezion,
king of Syria " (18) ; the Hezion of this verse appears to be the same with
the Rezon of xi. 23. — "/There is a league between me and thee, and
between my father and thy father" (19); rather, let there be a league
between me and thee, as there was, &c. But when was there an alliance
between their respective predecessors? Comp. xi. 25. — "The land of
Naphtali " (20) ; the northeastern part of Israel, which lay adjacent to
Syria.

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 83
Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped
him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the
house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And
Ahab made a grove." This Baal was one of the great
national deities 0f the Phoenicians, and accordingly of
Carthage, their colony.*
Ahab's accession to the throne of Israel took place
fifty-seven years after the establishment of that mon
archy by Jeroboam; and it serves to illustrate the
fragmentary and imperfect character of the history,
to remark that, for the next ninety years, it consists
almost entirely of matters relating to the prophets
Elijah and Elisha, the memoir of the former being
continued to the end of the First Book of Kings,
and that of the latter extending through half of the
Second Book.
Elijah is introdueed abruptly, without other de
scription than that he was a Tishbite, and " of the
inhabitants of Gilead." He made to the king of Is
rael the singular declaration, that, except as he (Eli
jah) should will and order it, there should be no dew
or rain for an indefinite time. He was then directed
by the word of the Lord to retire from the capital,
and hide himself by the brook Cherith, near the Jor
dan. There he remained, living on bread and flesh
which the ravens brought to him morning and even
ing, and finding his drink in the brook. At length,
by reason of the cessation of rain, the brook dried up,
and Elijah was directed by the word of the Lord to
* 1 Kings xvi. 1-34. — "He bought the hill Samaria," &c. (14); the royal
palace at Tirzah having been burnt (comp. 18), the residence of the court
was transferred to another city. — "The people were encamped against
Gibbethon," &c. (15) ; comp. xv. 27, for a similar record. — " In his days
did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho," &c. (34). The writer of this pas
sage appears to have been in error in respect to the date of the rebuilding
of Jericho. At all events, his statement contradicts other authorities. See
Vol. II. p. 154, note.

84 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
betake himself to Zarephath, a Philistine city depen
dent upon Sidon. In the outskirts of Zarephath, he
met a woman gathering sticks, whom he asked for a
draught of water, and a morsel of bread. She replied
that she had nothing left in the way of food, except
a handful of meal and a little oil, and that she was
collecting fuel to dress these for one last repast for
herself and her son, before they should die of the
famine. Elijah bade her make a cake for him first,
and afterwards provide for herself and her son ; and
assured her that her scanty stock of meal and oil
should not give out as long as the drought should
last ; all which turned out as he had said.
The son of Elijah's hostess fell sick and died. The
mother, in the bewilderment of her grief, charged
Elijah with being the cause of the calamity. He took
the body to his chamber, and, in answer to his prayer,
" the soul of the child came into him again, and he
revived." He presented to the mother her living son,
and she promptly acknowledged him for " a man of
God."* In the third year of the famine, Elijah was informed
by the word of the Lord that the drought was speed
ily to cease, and was directed to present himself be
fore Ahab. On his way he met Obadiah, the steward
of the royal household, a pious man, who, when the
queen had undertaken to extirpate the prophets of the
Lord, had found for a hundred of them a hiding-place
in two caves, where he had conveyed to them food and
drink. The king had sent Obadiah in one direction,
while he went himself in another, to explore the

* 1 Kings xvii. 1-24. — "Who was of the inhabitants of Gilead "
(1); that is, his home was east of the Jordan. — "The ravens brought
him bread," &c. (6) ; the word translated ravens some would render " mer
chants," others " Arabs." Like Cherilh and Tishbite, it occurs nowhere else
in the Bible.

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 85
country for water for the refreshment of his horses
and mules. The prophet accosted Obadiah, and bade
him inform the king of his presence. Obadiah re
monstrated, fearful that Elijah would convey himself
away meanwhile, and that the anger of the monarch
for such a disappointment would turn upon the mes
senger. The prophet, however, succeeded in convin
cing him of his sincerity, and Ahab and Elijah met
with mutual reproaches. " Art thou he that troub-
leth Israel \ " the impatient king inquired, imputing
to Elijah apparently the calamity of the famine. " I
have not troubled Israel," was the prophet's firm re
ply; "but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have
forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou
hast followed Baalim."
A proposal was made by Elijah, and accepted by
the king, to bring the question of the rightful au
thority of Jehovah and of Baal to a public test. The
prophets of Baal, four hundred and fifty in number,
and the prophets of the groves, four hundred, were to
be brought together at Mount Carmel, with Elijah
alone on the other side, and all Israel to witness the
proceedings. On the appointed day, Elijah proposed
that the parties should each take a bullock for an
offering to their respective gods, and place it, when
prepared for sacrifice, on a pile of wood, without fire ;
and that he who should answer by miraculously kind
ling the pile should be recognized as the national deity.
The people assenting, Elijah offered the first trial
to the prophets of Baal, who accordingly prepared
their victim, laid it on the altar, " and called on the
name of Baal from morning even until noon." It was
in vain. " There was no voice, nor any that answered."
Enraged at their disappointment, they leaped in de
rision upon the altar. At noon, irritated by the
VOL. III. 8

86 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
taunts of Elijah, who advised them not to be dis
couraged, but to try yet further, as perhaps their god
was busy, or taking repose, they cried again aloud,
and gashed themselves with knives and lancets. But
still all to no purpose. The long day was drawing
near to a close, and their god had given no token of
attention. Then Elijah presented himself for the trial, and
bade the people draw near, where they might see dis
tinctly what should befall. First, he caused an altar
of Jehovah, which had formerly been sanctified on that
spot, but which during the recent reign of idolatry
had been suffered to go to decay, to be repaired with
twelve stones, corresponding to the number of the
tribes of Israel, and a trench to be excavated around
it ; then he parted the victim, laid it on the wood,
and, to repel all suspicion of imposture, caused it to
be drenched three times successively with water,
which ran from it, and filled the trenches ; and, wait
ing the hour of evening sacrifice, he prayed that Je
hovah would vindicate the honor of his name, and
his servant's integrity. " Then the fire of the Lord
fell, and consumed the burnt-sacrifice, and the wood,
and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water
that was in the trench." The people fell prostrate,
astounded by the miracle, and then, rising, shouted
with one voice, " Jehovah, he is the God ; Jehovah, he
is the God." The prophet, following up his triumph,
cried out, " ' Take the prophets of Baal ; let not one
of them escape.' And they took them, and Elijah
brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew
them there."
Turning to the king, he bade him hasten with the
feast which had been prepared, for the time of the
drought was over, and presently his departure would

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 87
be impeded by the copious rains. He ascended to the
summit of Carmel, and, casting himself on the ground,
sent his servant seven times to observe the western
sky. After the seventh observation, the servant in
formed him that there was rising " a little cloud out
of the sea, like a man's hand." He sent to Ahab,
again to urge his immediate departure to his capital.
A furious storm arose, in the midst of which the king
rode with all speed to Jezreel, the prophet himself
running all the way before him to the city gate*
The intelligence of these transactions, brought by
Ahab to his idolatrous queen, incensed her still more
against Elijah. Informed of her threats, he fled to
Beersheba, in the southern extremity of the territory
of Judah, and leaving his servant there, withdrew
alone " a day's journey into the wilderness." Here,
sitting under a juniper- tree, he prayed that he might
die. Surprised by sleep, an angel awoke him, and
bade him refresh himself with food ; and seeing " a
cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at
his head," he obeyed the command, and composed
himself to rest. A second time he was aroused by
the same invitation ; and so invigorating was the re
past, that he " went in the strength of that meat
forty days and forty nights, unto Horeb, the mount
of God," the sacred mountain in Arabia, where Mo
ses had received the law.
* 1 Kings xviii. 1-46. — " There is no nation nor kingdom whither my
lord hath not sent to seek thee," &c. (10). This is not the language of his
tory, but of legendary licence. Even if the statement be restricted in its
interpretation so as to denote only the kingdoms bordering on that of Ahab,
this does not render it credible ; for Ahab had no such power even over them.
— " Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there "
(40) ; this brook falls into the Mediterranean at the foot of Mount Carmel.
— "And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel," &c. (45, 46). From Mount
Carmel to Jezreel, to which place Ahab is said to have ridden while seeking
shelter from a violent storm, with Elijah running before him, is a distance
of no less than thirty miles.

88 1 KINGS XII. 1.— XXII. 53. [LECT.
In a cave at Horeb, which he made his dwelling,
the word of the Lord came to him, and inquired his
business there. He replied, that, the only survivor
of the slain prophets of Jehovah, he was a hunted
fugitive from the fury of the idolaters of Israel. He
was bidden to come "forth, and stand upon the
mount." There he witnessed a raging hurricane,
followed by an earthquake and a conflagration. But
in neither of them was Jehovah present. When
these awful convulsions of nature had ceased, " a
still, small voice " was heard. It repeated the same
question respecting his purpose in coming to that
place, and was answered with the same reply. Then
the voice bade him depart to the wilderness of Da
mascus, there to anoint Hazael as king of Syria, and
returning thence to anoint Jehu to be king of Israel,
and Elisha to be his own successor in the prophetic
office, adding, that whosoever should escape the sword
of Hazael should fall by that of Jehu, and whoso
ever should elude the rage of Jehu should fall a vic
tim to that of Elisha, and that, so far from all the faith
ful in Israel having been extirpated, seven thousand
were left who had not bowed down unto Baal. De
parting on his appointed duty, he " found Elisha, the
son of Shaphat, who was ploughing with twelve yoke
of oxen before him, and he with the twelfth." He
" cast his mantle upon him," and invited him into his
service. Elisha only asked leave to bid farewell to his
parents, then " took a yoke of oxen, and slew them, and
boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, aud
gave unto the people, and they did eat ; then he arose,
and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him."*

* 1 Kings xix. 1-21.— "Forty days and forty nights unto Horeb,"
&c. (8). From Beersheba to Horeb is a journey of only three or four days.
The author of the story seems to have had in view the retirement of Moses
at Horeb for the same length of time ; comp. Ex. xxiv. 18.  " Go return

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 89
The war, which, in the time of. Baasha, the new
kingdom of Syria had waged within the northern
districts of Israel, broke out afresh in the reign of
Ahab. Benhadad, son of the prince of that name
before mentioned, with a powerful army, with horses
and chariots, and thirty-two subject kings in his train,
laid siege to the city of Samaria. Ahab attempted
to buy him off with the promise to surrender all his
silver and gold, his wives and children; but the in
satiable conqueror would be content with nothing
less than to send his own servants to search for and
carry away the stipulated booty, with whatever else
of value belonged to Ahab or his servants. The el
ders and people advised him to resist this oppressive de
mand, and a prophet assured him that the Lord would
give him victory " by the young men of the princes
of the provinces," two hundred and thirty-two in num
ber. In the battle which followed, he obtained the
victory accordingly. Taking advantage of the exposed
on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus," &c. (15, 16). Neither of the
formal directions in these two verses, preceded, as they are represented to
have been, by a preparation of such imposing solemnity, appears to have
been executed. Elijah did not anoint Hazael, for after his death Hazael
was still ignorant that he was to be king ; comp. 2 Kings viii. 13. He
did not anoint Jehu, for Jehu was anointed by one of the children of the
prophets, commissioned by Elisha; comp. 2 Kings ix. 1-6. And, as far as
we are informed by the later history, he never saw either of those princes,
nor anointed Elisha, nor visited Damascus. — " Him that escapeth the sword
of Hazael shall Jehu slay ; and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu
shall Elisha slay" (17). Hazael's cruelties to the Israelites are recorded
in 2 Kings x. 32 ; but we read of no similar carnage on the part of Jehu
or of Elisha. — "Elisha, the son of Shaphat, who was ploughing with twelve
yoke of oxen " (19). Upon this the commentators gravely remark, that he
must have been a rich man. A juster inference would seem to he, that he
was in the way to be a poor one, if this was his customary method of culti
vation. — " He said unto him, ' Go back again ; for what have I done to
thee ? ' " (20). This is unmeaning. The true sense I take to be, Return,
when thou hast taken leave of thy parents ; for to what a great service have
I called thee ! 8*

90 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
condition of Benhadad, as at noon, with his thirty-two
kings, he " was drinking himself drunk in the pavil
ions," the servants of the princes began the assault,
and, followed by the seven thousand soldiers who com
posed the host of Israel, put to utter rout the Syrian
host, so numerous, that its arrogant leader had boasted
"the dust of Samaria should not suffice it for hand
fuls." Benhadad, with a party of horse, found his
safety in an ignominious flight.
The prophet warned Ahab to make diligent prepa
ration against another invasion " at the return of the
year." The courtiers of Benhadad, representing the
cause of the recent disaster to have been that the bat
tle had been fought in a hilly country, where the Is
raelites had enjoyed the protection of their deities, who
were " gods of the hills," persuaded him to try the
fortune of war again in the plains, substituting for
the kings who had before led his troops certain more
experienced captains. With an army equal to that
which he had lost, " horse for horse, and chariot for
chariot," and so numerous that it " filled the coun
try," he pitched his camp over against the Israelites,
who were " before them like two little flocks of kids."
" A man of God " again promised victory to Ahab ;
" and so it was that in the seventh day the battle was
joined, and the children of Israel slew of the Syrians
an hundred thousand footmen in one day; but the
rest fled to Aphek, into the city, and there a wall fell
upon twenty and seven thousand of the men that
were left."
Shutting himself up in the closest privacy, Benha
dad sent a suppliant embassy to Ahab, who, approach
ing him with the most abject tokens of servitude and
despair, besought him to spare their master's life.
Ahab gave them gracious audience, and, bidding them

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 91
bring their master, received him in his own chariot,
and dismissed him again unharmed, after a conference
in which Benhadad engaged to restore all the posses
sions which his father had won from Israel in the late
war, and to give Ahab the same footing in Damascus,
his capital, as his father had had in Samaria.
Ahab should not have granted such easy terms.
" A certain man of the sons of the prophets said unto
his neighbour in the word of the Lord, ' Smite me, I
pray thee.' " His neighbour refused, and was told
that, in punishment of the denial, a lion should slay
him, which accordingly took place as soon as he had
gone on his way. Repeating the request to another
with better success, the prophet was smitten and
wounded. He " disguised himself with ashes upon
his face," and, (accosting the king upon the road, told
him that in the late battle a prisoner had been com
mitted to his custody, with a charge to keep him safe,
under the penalty of forfeiting his life by neglect, or
else paying a talent of silver. His prisoner, however,
had escaped, and now he submitted the case to the
king. Ahab gave judgment at once that the forfeit
must be paid. Then " he hasted, and took the ashes
away from his face ; and the king of Israel discerned
him, that he was of the prophets. And he said
unto him, ' Thus saith the Lord, Because thou hast
let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to
utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his
life, and thy people for his people.' And the king of
Israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and
came to Samaria." *
* 1 Kings xx. 1-43. — " Benhadad numbered the Syrians, and went up
to Aphek" (26). This appears to have been a city beneath Mount Leba
non, in the tribe of Asher, not far from Damascus, the capital city of Ben
hadad ; — the same probably as that mentioned in Joshua xiii. 4 ; xix. 30 ;

92 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
A revolting instance of the tyranny of Ahab, stim
ulated by his yet more hard-hearted wife, is next re-,
corded. Close to the royal palace at Jezreel was a
vineyard, the patrimonial property of one Naboth,
which Ahab desired to purchase for an herb-garden,
but which the owner declined to part with. Jezebel,
observing her husband's temper to be ruffled, inquired
the cause, and having learned it, undertook to find
means for its removal. Accordingly she sent letters
with the royal signature and seal to the magistrates of
Jezreel, commanding them to give out with great so
lemnity that a citizen had been guilty of blasphemy
and treason, to proclaim a fast for the expiation of
the offence, and to suborn false witnesses to fasten it
upon Naboth. Her directions were fulfilled ; his ex
ecution was decreed ; " they carried him forth out of
the city, and stoned him with stones that he died."
In the vineyard of Naboth, of which, as confiscated
for his crime, Ahab had gone to Jezreel to take pos
session, he was accosted by Elijah, who had come
thither, agreeably to a Divine commission, to rebuke
him for his oppression and perfidy, and assure him
that dogs should lick his own blood in the same spot
where they had licked that of Naboth. In the same
language as had been used by other prophets to other
wicked kings, Elijah denounced the ruin of Ahab's
Judges i. 31. — " Like two little flocks of kids" (27), which do not go in
considerable numbers together, like sheep. — " The cities which my father
took from thy father I will restore " (34) ; comp. xv. 20. — " Thou shalt
make streets for thee in Damascus," &c. (ibid.). Perhaps the word should
be rendered pastures, grazing commons; perhaps the sense is, that the Israel
ites were to have a particular quarter in Benhadad's capital assigned them
for habitations for some of their number, accompanied with municipal privi
leges. — "Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I ap
pointed to utter destruction," &c. (42). The previous narrative is silent as
to any obligation laid upon Ahab to use such severe measures with Benha
dad.

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 93
race, and added, that dogs should " eat Jezebel by the
wall of Jezreel." Dismayed by such warnings, Ahab
humbled himself with all signs of grief and penitence,
rending his robes, fasting, and clothing himself in
sackcloth; whereupon Elijah was commanded to in
form him that the evils threatened should not come in
his own time, but in that of his son.*
The peace between Syria and Israel lasted three
years. At the end of that time, Ahab, receiving a visit
from Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, engaged him in an
alliance, with a view to recover the possession of the
city of Ramoth in Gilead, wrongfully withheld from
him by Benhadad. At the suggestion of Jehoshaphat,
Ahab called his prophets together, to the number of
four hundred, to consult them respecting the prospects
of the enterprise ; and they unanimously promised
him success. Jehoshaphat, however, not yet content,
inquired whether there was not some other prophet,
who had not given his sentence, and was told that
there was one Micaiah, son of Imlah, a morose
man, who always abounded in auguries of evil. To
satisfy the king of Judah, Ahab sent to summon him
also, while, to enforce the declaration of the prophetic
brotherhood, " Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, made
him horns of iron ; and he said, ' Thus saith the Lord,
With these shalt thou push the Syrians, until thou
* 1 Kings xxi. 1-29. — "It came to pass after these things, &c. (1).
The Septuagint version, however, transposes this chapter with the twen
tieth, and accordingly places the affair of Naboth before the Syrian war. —
" Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity,"
&c. (21, 22). The language is the same as that used by Ahijah to Jero
boam (xiv. 10), and by Jehu to Baasha (xvi. 3, 4). — " Ahab  lay
in sackcloth, and went softly " (27); that is, with the slow, feeble motion
of a mourner. — " Because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring
the evil in his days" (29). This seems to be a narrative of later origin,
when it had been seen that the prediction concerning Ahab's fate attrib
uted to Elijah in verse 19 had not been verified by the fact ; comp. xxii. 37.

94 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
have consumed them.' " The messenger who had
gone in search of Micaiah urged him not to contra
dict the testimony of his fellows, but he replied, that
he could only speak as the Lord should direct him.
Admitted to the royal presence, he at first confirmed
the encouragement which had been given, but being
adjured to speak only the truth, he broke forth in a
different strain. In a vision, he said, he had seen
" all Israel scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have
not a shepherd ; and the Lord said, ' These have no
master, let them return every man to his house in
peace.' " Interrupted by the impatient Ahab, who
reminded his guest of what he had said, that he had
always found Micaiah a prophet of evil, Micaiah
went on to recount another vision. He had seen Je
hovah, he said, sitting on his throne, surrounded by
all the host of heaven, and heard him ask who would
undertake to persuade Ahab to go up to battle with
the Syrians, that he might fall before Ramoth-Gilead ;
and while different plans were proposed, a spirit had
come forth, and stood before Jehovah, and offered
himself to be a lying spirit in the mouth of all
Ahab's prophets ; and Jehovah had commissioned
him to proceed on the errand, and prevail. " Now,
therefore," said Micaiah, " behold, Jehovah hath put
a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets,
and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee."
Incensed at this contradiction, Zedekiah assailed
Micaiah with a blow, inquiring, at the same time,
when the lying spirit that had prompted his friends
had given that information to their reprover, to which
Micaiah answered, that he should have that question
solved in a coming day of his own calamity and fear.
Ahab punished his unwelcome boldness by ordering
him into close imprisonment, and Micaiah parted from

XL.] THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 95
him, declaring that the event would make good his
words, and calling on all the people to bear witness to
them. Proceeding to the war, the king of Israel disguised
himself on the eve of an engagement, while Jehosha
phat put on his royal robes. Exposed by this display
to a furious onset of the Syrians who mistook him for
Ahab, Jehoshaphat saved his life by making known
to them their error, while the king of Israel, fatally
wounded by a chance shot from a bow, ordered his
charioteer to drive him from the field. His officers
sounded a general retreat, and, being brought to the
city of Samaria, he died and was buried there, the
alleged prediction of Elijah that the dogs should lick
his blood on the spot in Jezreel where Naboth had
been stoned, receiving, in the view of the writer of
the narrative, a partial accomplishment, in the fact
that the dogs licked up, in the pool of Samaria, the
stained water in which his bloody chariot and armour
had been washed.
Jehoshaphat, the son of good king Asa, had as
cended the throne when thirty-five years of age, in
the fourth year of the reign of Ahab. He emulated
his father's piety, though chargeable with similar im
perfections in the way of indulgence to idolatrous
abuses of the time. He projected an expedition to
v Ophir in quest of gold, which by some casualty mis
carried ; " the ships were broken at Ezion-geber."
He died at Jerusalem, at the age of sixty, and was
succeeded by Jehoram, his son. The successor to the
throne and to the character of Ahab was his son
Ahaziah, whose inauspicious reign lasted but two
years. He would have associated himself with Jehosh
aphat in his proposed commercial enterprise ; but
that prudent monarch declined the alliance, perhaps

96 1 KINGS XII. 1. — XXII. 53. [LECT.
by reason of the unsatisfactory result of his engage
ments with Ahab.*
* 1 Kings xxii. 1-53. — " Jehoshaphat the king of Judah came down to
the king of Israel " (2) . Jehoshaphat's son married Ahab's daughter ; comp.
2 Kings viii. 18. — " Know ye that Ramoth in Gilead is ours ? " &c. (3) ;
comp. xx. 34. Ramoth-gilead was a Levitical city, on the eastern side of
the Jordan, in the territory of Gad ; comp. Josh. xx. 8 ; xxi. 38. — " They
said, Go up, for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king " (6) ;
false prophets as these were, it appears that Ahab applied to none but such
as professed to be prophets of Jehovah. — " Micaiah  said, Heark
en, O people, every one of you " (28). These words of Micaiah appear to
have no particular appropriateness to the circumstances under which they
are related to have been uttered. They are the same words with which the
prophecy of Micah begins (comp. Mic. i. 2). That prophecy was probably
extant more than a hundred and fifty years before the history ; and the his
torian, who was acquainted with it, may have designed, by putting well-
known words of Micah into the mouth of Micaiah, to refer the authorship
of Micah's prophecy to the Micaiah of Ahab's time. — " The king of Israel
said unto Jehoshaphat, ' I will disguise myself, and enter into the battle,' "
&c. (30). Our translators, guided by the context, and following all the ver
sions except the Vulgate, have departed from the Hebrew text, which reads,
" Disguise thyself," Sic. — " They washed his armour, according unto the
word of the Lord," &c. (38) ; comp. xxi. 19. — " There was then no king
in Edom ; a deputy was king " (47). Probably we should render, with the
Chaldee paraphrase, " There was no king in Edom, but a deputy of the
king " ; that is, of Jehoshaphat, who, governing Edom as a subject province,
held command of the port of Ezion-geber on the Red Sea, mentioned in the
next verse. By these " ships of Tharshish," which were built on the Red
Sea to go to Ophir, were probably meant ships of heavy burden, such as
were commonly built for the voyage to Tarsus, in Spain.

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 97

LECTURE XLI.
THE TIME OF ELISHA.
2 KINGS I. 1.— XIII. 25.
Death of Ahaziah. — Last Acts and Translation of Elijah. —
Rebellion of the Moabites. — Miracles of Elisha. — Cure of
the Waters of Jericho. — Destruction of the Children of Beth
el  Supply of Water to the Israelitish Army. — Defeat of
the Moabites. — Supply of Oil to a Widow. — Birth, Death,
and reanimation of her child. — antidote to a poison. — cre
ATION of Food. — Cure of the Leprosy of a Syrian. — Detection-
and Punishment of Gehazi's Fraud. — Recovery of an Axe from
the Water. — Communication of Intelligence to the King. —
Capture and Dismissal of a Party of Syrians. — Siege and
Famine of Samaria. — Deliverance therefrom. — Prediction to
Hazael. — Revolt of Idum.ea. — War with Syria. — Unction of
Jehu. — Fate of Joram, Ahaziah, Jezebel, the Sons of Ahab, the
Brothers of Ahaziah, and the Priests of Baal. — Death of Jehu.
— Usurpation and Death of Athaliah. — Coronation of Joash. —
Administration of Joash and Jehoiada. — Wars with Syria. —
Interview of Joash with Elisha. — Elisha's Death and Burial.
— Resuscitation of a Dead Body by Contact with his Bones.
The beginning of the reign of Ahaziah over Israel
was disturbed by a rebellion of the Moabites, of the
incidents of which, however, nothing is recorded. The
king, wounded by a fall in his palace at Samaria, sent
messengers to Ekron, one of the Philistine cities, to
inquire of the oracle of Baalzebub whether he should
recover from the injury. They were met on the way
by Elijah, who, after rebuking them for not rather in
quiring of the God of Israel, declared that their mas
ter should never more rise from his bed. His person,
VOL. III. 9

98 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25. [LECT.
it appears, was unknown to them, for when they pre
sented themselves before Ahaziah, and reported that
they had turned back from their journey because they
had been accosted by a wayfarer who told them that
the king's hurt was mortal, he questioned them con
cerning the stranger's appearance, and from their de
scription recognized him as Elijah the Tishbite.
A party of fifty men, sent by Ahaziah to apprehend
him, found him where " he sat on the top of an
hill." Addressing him as a "man of God," their
leader summoned him in the king's name to come
down: "' If I be a man of God,' " he replied, " ' then
let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee
and thy fifty.' And there came down fire from heav
en, and consumed him and his fifty." A second party
of the same number was sent by the persevering
prince, and precisely the same proceedings were re- .
peated. Nothing discouraged, Ahaziah sent a third
officer with the same attendance. Warned by the
fate of his predecessors, he approached Elijah on his
knees, and prayed for mercy. The prophet was moved
by his distress, and, by the direction of " the angel of
the Lord," accompanied him to the royal presence.
He repeated to Ahaziah in person what he had before
told his messengers, and " he died, according to the
word of the Lord which Elijah had spoken," and was
succeeded by his brother Jehoram.*
The prophet's earthly course was drawing to an
end. Departing from Gilgal, he desired his servant
Elisha to remain behind, because the Lord, he said,
had sent him to Bethel. Elisha, however, would not

* 2Kingsi. 1 - 18. — " Moab rebelled against Israel" (1). David had
subdued the Moabites (comp. 2 Sam. viii. 2), and, at the division of the
kingdoms, they came under the power of that to which their neighbours,
the tribes east of Jordan, were attached.

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 99
be left, and to Bethel they came together, where the
faithful servant, informed by " the sons of the proph
ets " who dwelt there, that the Lord was about to take
his master from his head, replied that he already knew
it, and bade them hold their peace. Again Elijah
would have pursued his journey alone, but again was
denied ; and, attended by Elisha, he proceeded to Jeri
cho, where other sons of the prophets addressed Eli
sha, and were answered in the same language as be
fore. From Jericho, after having again in vain pro
posed a separation to his companion, Elijah went on
to the river Jordan, while " fifty men of the sons of
the prophets went, and stood to view afar off."
Arrived at the river's brink, " Elijah took his man
tle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters,
and they were divided hither and thither, so that they
two went over on dry ground." Permitted by Elijah to
make a parting request, Elisha asked to be endowed
with a double portion of his spirit, and was assured
that the boon should be granted, provided he should
see his master at the moment of his being taken from
his side. " And it came to pass, as they still went on,
and talked, that, behold, there appeared, a chariot of
fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder ;
and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven ; and
Elisha saw it, and he cried, ' My father ! my father !
the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.' And
he saw him no more."
Elisha tore his own garments in token of grief, and
clothing himself with his master's mantle, which had
fallen as he ascended, set out on his journey home
ward, dividing the waters of Jordan with the mantle,
as had been done when he crossed before. At Jeri
cho, the first city to which he came, the sons of the
prophets acknowledged him as Elijah's representative,

100 2 KINGS I. l.-XIII. 25. [LECT.
"and they came to meet him, and bowed themselves
to the ground before him." They importuned him to
allow them to send out fifty strong men to search for
the lost prophet, "lest peradventure the spirit of the
Lord hath taken him up, and cast him upon some
mountain, or into some valley." Refused at first, they
persisted in their suit, and obtained permission ; " and
they sought three days, but found him not."
If the legends and traditions which supplied the
author of this book with so large a part of his mate
rials are, in the memoirs of Elijah, full of prodigies
of the most amazing description, and not always of
any apparent significance, they deal still more freely in
such narratives in the record of the adventures of his
successor. The citizens of Jericho represented to him,
on his arrival there, that the site of their city was
agreeable, but that its water was unwholesome and its
soil unfruitful. He took some salt in a cruse, and
pouring it into the fountain which furnished their
supplies, assured them that the water thenceforward
should be salubrious, and the land productive. " So
the waters were healed unto this day, according to the
saying of Elisha which he spake." As he went on
his way to Bethel, from which place he proceeded to
Mount Carmel, and thence returned to Samaria, some
" little children out of the city " amused themselves
with the baldness of his head. " And he turned back,
and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of
the Lord ; and there came forth two she-bears out of
the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." *
* 2 Kings ii. 1 -25. — " Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal " (1). By
this I suppose we are not to understand the well-known Gilgal near the
Jordan, mentioned in Joshua v. 10, and other texts, but another place of the
same name, mentioned in Joshua xii. 23 and Deuteronomy xi. 30. From
the context of this last verse, it appears to have been near Mounts Gerizim
and Ebal ; and if so, Elijah, in going from it to Jericho, would pass through

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 101
The king and army soon needed his services. In
the war which had broken out in consequence of the
refusal of the king of Moab to render the annual
tribute of his flocks, the forces of Jehoram had been
joined by those of Edom, and of Jehoshaphat, king of
Judah, and in their march of seven days through the
wilderness of Edom they had been distressed by want
of water. Jehoshaphat asked if there was not some
prophet of the Lord to whom they could have re
course, " and one of the king of Israel's servants an
swered and said, ' Here is Elisha, the son of Shaphat,
which poured water on the hands of Elijah.' " The
three kings accordingly left their camp in Edom, and
proceeded to the residence of Elisha, in Samaria.
To the king of Israel he would have nothing to say,
but referred him to the false prophets in whom his fa
ther and mother had trusted. For Jehoshaphat he pro
fessed greater respect. He called for a minstrel, " and
it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the
hand of the Lord came upon him." In this rapt state,
he ordered trenches to be opened in the valley, and de
clared that, without storm or rain, they should be
filled with copious supplies of water, and that the ex
pedition should end in a complete subjugation of the
Moabites. Accordingly, the next morning, " there
came water by the way of Edom, and the country was
Bethel, as he is represented to have done, whereas from the other Gilgal he
would have had to retrace his steps the whole way. After all, however, it
may be only an instance of the writer's unacquaintance with the geography
of the country. — " Let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me " (9) ; per
haps, as Geddes suggests, a duplicate portion, a similar spirit ; but, on the
other hand, the still more marvellous adventures attributed to Elisha might
well be ascribed to a twofold endowment with Elijah's power. — " He
cried, ' My father ! my father ! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen
thereof " (12); there was in this form of exclamation a special appropriate
ness to the scene described, but it appears to have been language suitable to
express reverence for any great public benefactor ; comp. xiii. 14.
9*

102 2 KINGS I. 1.— XIII. 25. [LECT.
filled with water." As the rising sun shone on it, it
looked to the Moabites as if stained with blood, and
they concluded that the allied hosts had smitten one
another, and that their kings had fallen in the strife.
Proceeding on this hasty inference, they attacked the
Israelitish camp with the whole force of their nation,
" all that were able to put on armour, and upward,"
but were beaten back with great slaughter, and their
whole country was overrun. Their king, seeing the
battle turned against him, attempted, with seven hun
dred men, to cut his way through to the king of
Edom, but failed in the undertaking. As a last ex
periment to appease his angry gods, " he took his
eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead, and
offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall."
Struck with horror at the transaction, the Israelitish
host departed for their homes.*
* 2 Kings iii. 1-27. — " Jehoram, the son of Ahab, began to reign over
Israel in Samaria in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah "
(1) ; a different statement from that in i. 17, where Jehoram is said to have
ascended the throne in the second year of Jehoshaphat's son and successor.
Also, Ahaziah, the predecessor of Jehoram, is said (1 Kings xxii. 51) to
have begun to reign in Jehoshaphat's seventeenth year, and to have reigned
two years ; so that even the hypothesis of the commentators, that Jehosha
phat may have associated his son with him in the government, does nothing
towards relieving the contradiction. — "He cleaved unto the sins of Jero
boam, the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin " (3) ; that is (as in the
numerous other instances in which the language is used), he continued to
support the schismatical worship instituted by Jeroboam at Dan and Bethel,
instead of sacrificing at Jehovah's one temple at Jerusalem. — " An hun
dred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams, with the wool " (4) ;
an immense tribute, which the commentators have tried various expedients
to reduce within the limits of probability. — " He went and sent to Je
hoshaphat, the king of Judah," &c. (7) ; all the account which follows of
transactions between Jehoram and Jehoshaphat implies a further contradic
tion to i. 17. —"He said, ' Which way shall we go up? ' And he an
swered, ' The way through the wilderness of Edom ' " (8). Moab was
east of Judah, and Edom south of it. To reach Moab in the method pre
scribed, the Israelites must march in a southern direction the whole length
of the territory of Judah, leaving their own eastern frontier exposed to the

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 103
A narrative next occurs, which so nearly resembles
an incident already related of the life of Elijah, as to
suggest the suspicion of its being only an altered and
amplified form of the same legend* A widow of one
of the sons of the prophets told Elisha that a creditor
was threatening to take two of her sons for slaves.
The prophet bade her bring a pot of oil, which she
said was the only thing that remained to her, borrow
as many vessels as possible of her neighbours, and fill
them from the cask, as long as its contents should
hold out. She did so, shutting herself up with her
sons ; and the oil was not exhausted till the last bor
rowed vessel had been filled. He then directed her to
sell it, discharge her debt, and provide with the residue
for the maintenance of her family. At a place called
rebels, and then reach Moab by a countermarch to the north, on the eastern
shore of the Dead Sea. Nothing could be more incongruous than the ar
rangement, as related. It was necessary, also, by this movement, to pass
through a desert country, without supplies of water, exposing the armies to
great peril, as the event proved. — "So the king of Israel, and Jehoshaphat,
and the king of Edom, went down ('TT) to him" (12). Whither did they
go down ? The word ri3 in the preceding verse determines nothing even
as to nearness or remoteness. The history left Elisha in Samaria ; comp.
ii. 25. But such a narrative does not regard the congruities of time and
place ; — " Modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenia."
— " And it came to pass in the morning, when the meat-offering was of
fered," &c. (20) ; comp. 1 Kings xviii. 29. These are interesting inciden
tal notices of observances, in a degenerate period of the nation, of the ritual
instituted by Moses ; comp. Ex. xxix. 39. — " On every good piece of land
cast every man his stone, and filled it ; and they stopped all the wells of
water, and felled all the good trees," &c. (25). It is only through careless
reading, that we overlook the character of such statements. Especially,
the idea of ruining the fertility of land by conveying stones enough to
cover over its surface is one suitable enough to a popular legend, but not
such as marks the work of an exact, not to say a divinely inspired, histo
rian. — " To break through even unto the king of Edom " (26). What
benefit could he hope from that? But I think we may render, " by the king
of Edom" ; that is, through the Idumsean division of the hostile army.
* Comp. 1 Kings xvii. 8 - 24.

104 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25. [LECT.
Shunem, he was from time to time the guest of a wo
man of distinction, who, from reverence for his holy
character, had, with her husband's consent, caused an
apartment to be built and furnished for his reception.
He asked her what recompense he could offer for her
hospitality, and whether she would have him make
interest in her behalf with the king or his general.
But she replied that she was contented with her lot,
and had no claim to make on his generosity. • Learn
ing, however, from Gehazi, his servant, that she had no
child, nor any hope of one, he called her again, and
promised that in another year she should " embrace a
son," which fell out as he foretold.
In due time the child was grown, and went out
one day to join his father, who was busy in the field
among his reapers. Complaining of sudden illness, he
was sent home to his mother's care, and " sat upon
her knees till noon, and then died." She laid the body
on the bed where Elisha was used to repose ; then,
going out, mounted an ass, and with an attendant set
out with all speed to find the prophet at Mount Carmel.
Seeing a stranger coming, and informed by his ser
vant who it was, he sent Gehazi forward to meet her,
and inquire after the welfare of her family. She an
swered, " It is well " ; but did not pause till she had
thrown herself at the prophet's feet. Observing her
agony, Elisha chid Gehazi, who would have removed
her, and said that she must be afflicted with some dis
tress which the Lord had not made known to him.
In the frenzy of her grief, she spoke nothing, except
to upbraid the prophet, as if he had deceived her in
the promise of a son ; but Elisha understood her, and
bade his servant take his staff, and, making all speed,
repair to the house of mourning, and lay it on the
face of the corpse. Accompanied by the mother, he

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 105
accomplished the errand; but the charm was inef
fectual; " there was neither voice nor hearing." Him
self following not far behind, the prophet was met
by Gehazi with these tidings, and made haste to the
dwelling. He shut himself up with the body, and,
having prayed, stretched himself upon it, till it grew
warm, and on a repetition of the same action gave
other signs of life. Then he called the mother, and
bade her take up and remove her reanimated son.
Elisha went to Gilgal, and found, it suffering from
a famine. He bade his servant prepare food for the
company of sons of the prophets who had thronged
around him. One of them, who had collected some
wild plants in ignorance of their qualities, "shred
them into the mess of pottage." As they ate, they
were thrown into consternation by detecting the poi
sonous ingredients ; but Elisha, calling for some meal,
cast it into the vessel, and it proved an effectual anti
dote. A friend, from a neighbouring village, brought
him a present of a few loaves of barley-meal, and
ears of newly-ripened corn. Disregarding the re
monstrance that it was no sufficient repast for a party
of a hundred men, he ordered it to be set before
them ; and, besides feeding them all to satiety, a por
tion remained unused.*

* 2 Kings iv. 1 - 44 . — " There cried a certain woman of the wives of the
sons of the prophets," &c. (1). Josephus (" Antiq." Lib. ix. cap. 4. § 2)
will have this to have been the widow of Obadiah, Ahab's steward (comp.
1 Kings xviii. 3) . But Obadiah does not appear to have been one of the sons
of the prophets. — " The creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be
bondmen " (ibid.). No right to seize a man's children for the payment of
his debts is expressly given in the law of Moses. Perhaps the practice, if it
ever was such, was introduced as a fair application of the principle recog
nized in Ex. xxi. 7. — " It fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem,
where was a great woman " (8) . Josephus omits the whole narrative of the
relations of Elisha to this family. Shunem was in the territory of Issachar,
between Jezreel and Mount Tabor; comp. Josh. xix. 18; 1 Sam. xxviii.

106 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25. [LECT.
Naaman, commander-in-chief of the forces of Syria,
was afflicted with a leprosy. In his family was a
young female slave, " brought away captive out of the
land of Israel." At her instance, Naaman's wife ad
vised him to apply to Elisha for the cure of his mal
ady. He took a letter from his master to the king
of Israel, and, provided with rich gifts, presented
himself to that monarch. The letter solicited him
to undertake the cure of Naaman, and the king in
terpreted it as the indication of a purpose to make oc
casion for a quarrel. Elisha heard of what had taken
place, and sent a message desiring that the afflicted
soldier might be referred to him. When Naaman
presented himself at his door, he sent him word to
go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, and he would
find his health restored. The Syrian rejected the
thought of so simple a remedy, and one which seemed
to reflect on the sanitary qualities of the rivers of his
own land, and " he turned and went away in a rage " ;
but, soothed by his attendants, he was persuaded to try
the application, and it succeeded to his wish. He re
turned to Elisha's dwelling full of gratitude, and, pro
fessing his conviction that there was " no God in all
the earth, but in Israel," urged on him a recompense,
which the prophet declined. He then proceeded on
his way, having first begged the boon of " two mules'
burden of earth " from such a sacred region, on which,
returned home, he might thenceforward offer sacri-
4. — " He said, ' Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day ? It is neither new-
moon, nor Sabbath' " (23). The Sabbaths and new-moons (comp. Numb.
xxviii. 11) were holidays; suitable occasions, therefore, for visiting friends
and offering presents. — "The mother of the child said,  'I will
not leave thee ' " (30) ; she distrusted the efficacy of Gehazi's interven
tion, and desired to be accompanied by the prophet himself to her home. —
" There came a man from. Baal-shalisha " (42) ; a place somewhere in the
territory of Ephraim ; comp. 1 Sam. ix. 4.

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 107
fices to Jehovah alone, and having prayed that his in
voluntary fault might be forgiven, if, in attendance on
his master, he might sometimes have to enter the tem
ple, and take an apparent part in the worship of
Rimmon. Gehazi, Elisha's servant, was not so disinterested;
and, seeing an opportunity for some profit to himself,
he followed the retinue, and, coming up with it, told
Naaman, who descended from his chariot to pay him
respect, that his master had received an unexpected
visit, and desired some means of liberality to his
guests. The grateful stranger gave him more than
was asked, and sent two of his servants to bear the
present. Gehazi dismissed them before they reached
the house, and, hiding away the booty, presented him
self before his master. Elisha instantly charged him
with the fraud, and punished it with the infliction
on himself and his posterity of the leprosy of which
Naaman had been cured.*
The sons of the prophets proposed to Elisha to build
for themselves and him better houses ; and to gratify
them, he accompanied them to the banks of the Jor
dan, to fell and hew the timber. A borrowed axe-head
by accident fell into the stream; the prophet cut a
twig, and, casting it upon the surface, the wood at
tracted the iron, and the tool was saved. The war
with Syria was again raging, and the king of Israel
was repeatedly extricated from danger by information
communicated by Elisha respecting the stealthy move
ments of the hostile army. Informed of this agency
by his officers, whom he had charged with treachery,
* 2 Kings v. 1-27. — " Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damas
cus," &c. (12) ; we nowhere else read of these Syrian rivers, either in
sacred history or profane ; and the same is true of the deity named Rimmon
in verse 18.

108 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25. [LECT.
as if it were they who had betrayed his plans, the
king of Syria sent a great force by night to Doth an,
where Elisha lay, to apprehend him. The prophet's
servant discovered it at early morning, and in extreme
alarm informed his master. Elisha bade him dismiss
his fears, and know that they were protected by a
higher power; and, offering a prayer that his eyes
might be opened, " the Lord opened the eyes of the
young man, and he saw, and behold," not one chariot
only, like that which had borne away Elijah, but
" the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire
round about Elisha." He prayed again, and the Sy
rian host without the walls were smitten at once with
utter blindness. He went down to them, and, assuring
them that they had lost their way, offered himself for
their guide to the city and the person of which they
were in quest. He conducted them to Samaria, and
there, in answer to another prayer, their vision was
restored, and they saw themselves in the presence of
the monarch and the army of Israel. " My father,
shall I smite them \ shall I smite them % " said the
king. But Elisha directed that they should be liber
ally feasted, and safely dismissed. His clemency had
a happy effect ; " the bands of Syria came no more
into the land of Israel."
But again the bands of Syria did come. Benha
dad " gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged
Samaria." The city was reduced by famine to misera
ble distress, so that " an ass's head was sold for four
score pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab
of dove's ordure for five pieces of silver." An ap
palling incident reached the knowledge of the king.
A woman told him that she had agreed with another,
that on two successive days they would kill each
her son, and save their own lives by feeding together

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 109
on their offspring's flesh ; that she had fulfilled her
part of the agreement; that her son had been boiled
and eaten; and that now her companion had been
faithless, and had secreted her child. Struck with
horror at such an unnatural enormity, the king tore
his robes, and the people, as he passed along the walls,
observed that he wore sackcloth beneath them. His
outraged feelings were vented in threats against Eli
sha. The prophet, surrounded by elders, sat quietly
in his dwelling, and, when a stranger step drew near,
told them that it was a royal messenger sent to take
his life, and bade them, as soon as he should reach
the house, to " shut the door, and hold him fast." The
evil they were suffering, he added, was from the Lord,
and its end was rapidly approaching.*
" Thus saith the Lord," said he, " to-morrow, about
this time, shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a
shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the
gate of Samaria." One of the courtiers venturing to
object, that such a sudden abundance could hardly be
produced, even "if the Lord would make windows in
heaven," Elisha told him further, that he should see,
* 2 Kings vi. 1 -33. — " Behold, he is in Dothan " (13) ; a town in the
territory of Manasseh, about twelve miles from Samaria, to the north ;
comp. Gen. xxxvii. 17. — " Wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast
taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? " (22). The Vulgate,
Syriac, and Chaldee versions suppress the interrogation. The sense I take
to be, Thy own captives are at thy disposal; but these are mine. — "An
ass's head was sold," &c. (25) ; the ass was, by the terms of the Law (comp.
Lev. xi. 3), an unclean animal, and therefore prohibited food to a Jew; the
statement is intended to illustrate the extreme necessity of the time. —
" This son of a murderer " (32) ; Jehoram was son of the sanguinary
Ahab. — " He said, ' Behold, this evil is of the Lord,' " &c. (33). I have
given one interpretation of these words in the text. Perhaps, however,
they should be referred to the king (who had followed his messenger, comp.
32), and rendered, Jehovah sends all this desperate trouble upon us ; why,
then, should I longer hope for deliverance from him, or use forbearance with
his prophet ?
VOL. III. 10

110 2 KINGS I. 1.- XIII. 25. [LECT.
but not partake of it. Four lepers were sitting out
side the gate, bewailing their woful condition, with
starvation staring them in the face, whether they re
mained where they were, or withdrew within the city.
At last they determined to surrender themselves to the
enemy, who, at the worst, could put them to a speedier
and more merciful end than that by which they now
were threatened. " And they rose up in the twilight,
to go unto the camp of the Syrians ; and when they
were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria,
behold, there was no man there. For the Lord had
made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chari
ots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great
host ; and they said one to another, ' Lo, the king of
Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites,
and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us.'
Wherefore they arose, and fled in the twilight, and
left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even
the camp as it was, and fled for their life."
The lepers having first regaled themselves with the
abundant supplies of the empty pavilions, and spoiled
them of silver and gold, which they spent some time
in hiding, bethought themselves before daybreak of
going back to relieve the famishing city with the
tidings. They told their story to the keeper of the
city gate, who sent to report it at the palace. The
king was incredulous, and affirmed it to be a strata
gem of the enemy, who would assail them from some
ambush as soon as they should sally out for food. Ac
cordingly, by the advice of one of his servants, he
despatched horsemen to reconnoitre, who, pursuing the
track of the retreating Syrians, found it strewn all
along with costly vestures and plate, which they had
thrown away for the sake of a less encumbered march.
The fact being made known at the city, the famishing

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. Ill
people poured out to feed themselves at the camp;
and such proved the abundance of the spoil, as to make
good those words of the prophet which the distrustful
courtier had rejected as incredible. They were des
tined to be made good equally in respect to his own
fate. In the tumultuous throng and press of the
people to reach the plenty awaiting them in the camp,
they ran over him at his post of watchman of the
gate ; " and he died, as the man of God had said,"
having seen, but not tasted, the predicted relief*
By the advice of Elisha, who predicted a general
famine in Israel, of seven years' duration, the Shu--
namite woman, whose son he had restored to life, re
tired with her family into the country of the Philis
tines. Returning at the end of that time, she pre
sented herself before the king to reclaim her property.
There she met Gehazi, whose leprosy, it seems, did
not obstruct his being admitted to the royal presence,
and from whom it chanced that the monarch was just
then asking a relation of Elisha's miracles. He was
speaking of the reanimation of the dead child, when
the woman appeared, and Gehazi appealed to her to
confirm his story ; which when she had done, the king
immediately granted her suit, with the addition of all
the revenue of her land during her absence.
The king of Syria, attacked with dangerous illness,
* 2 Kings vii. 1-20. — " They arose  and left their tents, and
their horses, and their asses,  and fled for their life " (7). They
fled with such precipitation that they threw away their clothes, their silver,
and their gold (comp. 8, 15) ; yet they left behind the animals whose speed
would have helped them on their way. — "Five of the horses that remain "
(13) ; that is, that had neither died of starvation, nor been killed for their
flesh. — " Behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel that are left in it ;
behold, I say, they are even as all the multitude of the Israelites that are
consumed " (ibid.) ; that is, apparently, If the service is attended with
danger, it is no greater than has been incurred by the whole body of the
soldiery, surviving or dead. But the text is probably faulty, and the ver
sions represent it differently.

112 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25. [LECT.
was informed that Elisha had arrived at his capital.
He directed one of his principal courtiers, named Ha
zael, to visit the prophet with a rich present, " forty
camels' burden," and inquire concerning the prospect
of his recovery. Elisha, with tears, bade him tell his
master that he might " certainly recover," but added
that Jehovah had told him that he would " surely
die." Hazael, inquiring the cause of this unexpected
emotion, was told that it was excited by a prophetic
view of the barbarities, which he, as future king of
Syria, would exercise against the children of Israel.
Protesting his innocence of any such purpose or such
ambition, he returned to his master, and told him that
the prophet said he would recover. " And it came to
pass, on the morrow, that he took a thick cloth, and
dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that
he died ; and Hazael reigned in his stead."
The influence of Jehoram's wife, a daughter of the
idolatrous family of Ahab, beguiled him into the tol
eration of practices as yet unknown in Judah. " He
walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the
house of Ahab." He was punished by the revolt of
the great tributary state of Idumsea, which, the writer
says, continued to his own time unsubdued, notwith
standing a victory which Jehoram gained in an expe
dition to reduce it. After a reign of eight years, he
died at the age of forty, and was succeeded by his son
Ahaziah. He reigned but one year, during which he
followed in his father's steps of crime. He allied
himself to Joram, king of Israel, for a war against
Hazael, king of Syria. A battle was fought at Ra
moth-gilead, from which Joram retired wounded to
his palace at Jezreel, whither Ahaziah also went to
visit him.*
* 2 Kings viii. 1 - 29. — " The king talked with Gehazi " (4) . But Ge-

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 113
Things being thus, Elisha " called one of the chil
dren of the prophets," and bade him take a box of
ointment, repair to Ramoth-gilead, find out Jehu, the
son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, who was com
manding there against the Syrians, lead him to a re-

hazi was a leper (comp. v. 27), and a leper was carefully avoided, and could
not even approach the habitations of men (comp. Vol. I. p. 276). — " In the
fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then
king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, began to
reign " (16). But according to i. 17, so far from Jehoram of Judah ascend
ing the throne in 'the fifth year of Jehoram of Israel, the latter began his
reign in the second year of the reign of the former ; while, according to iii.
I, Jehoram of Israel began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat,
father and predecessor of Jehoram of Judah. There is no reconciling these
contradictions. The simple fact is, that the compiler, following probably
different authorities, places different statements side by side. — " Jehosha
phat being then king of Judah " (ibid.). These words are wanting in the
Syriac and Arabic versions, and in several manuscripts of the Hebrew,
Septuagint, and Vulgate. They are probably the interpolation of* some
scholiast, who hoped to remove the diversities of statement by representing
Jehoshaphat's son as associated with him in the government before his
death. But even that hypothesis, besides being scarcely consistent with
the language in the other texts, would leave the difficulty in full force
(comp. viii. 16 with i. 17). — " In the fifth year of Joram,  king of
Israel " (ibid.). This altered form of the names of the contemporaneous
kings of Judah and Israel, hitherto called Jehoram, prevails from this verse.
— " He promised him to give him alway a light, and to his children " (19) ;
comp. 1 Kings xi. 36. — "Joram went over to Zair" (21). We have no
means of identifying this place. Some of the versions appear to confound it
with Mount Seir, which is another name for Edom. — " Then Libnah revolted
at the same time" (22) ; a sacerdotal city in the tribe of Judah ; comp.
Josh. xv. 42 ; xxi. 13. — " In the twelfth year of Joram, the son of Ahab,"
&c. (25); to accord with verses 16 and 17, this should be the thirteenth
year. — " His mother's name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri" (26);
but according to verse 18, she was a daughter of Ahab. — " He was the son-
in-law of the house of Ahab " (27). But the relation in which he was before
represented as standing to that house was different. The lexicographers
think they get authority from this text to extend the meaning of jnn, prop
erly rendered bridegroom, and son-in-law, so as to make it mean any near
connection. — " He went with Joram, the son of Ahab," &c. (28). I can
not avoid the suspicion that we have here, in a more condensed form, the
same story that is told of Ahab and Jehoshaphat in 1 Kings xxii. I - 4, 31
et seq. 10*

114 2 KINGS I. 1.— XIII. 25. [LECT.
ed apartment, anoint him as king of Israel, and then
make his escape homewards with all speed. All was
done as he directed. " The young man the prophet "
found Jehu in a company of officers, and, having ful
filled his errand, proceeded still further to apprise
Jehu that he was to exterminate the race of Ahab, in
retribution for the blood of the prophets which it had
shed. Rejoining his companions, after some hesitation,
Jehu replied to their inquiries by an avowal of what
had taken place. They entered into the plot, and
with sound of trumpet proclaimed him king.
He lost no time in taking measures to secure the
person of Joram. A watchman on the tower of Jezreel
informed the sick monarch that he saw a party hastily
approaching. A horseman was sent to meet it, and
inquire its purpose, and on accosting it was ordered
by Jehu into the rear. This, too, being reported by
the watchman, another horseman was sent out, and
experienced a similar reception. By this time the
watchman observed the impetuous advance of the
chariot to be " like the driving of Jehu, the son of
Nimshi," and the two kings, " each in his chariot,
went out against Jehu, and met him in the portion of
Naboth the Jezreelite." After a few words of angry
conference, Joram, saying to Ahaziah that there was
treachery, turned and fled. He was arrested by a
shaft from the bow of Jehu, and fell mortally wounded
on the floor of his chariot. Jehu ordered his body to
be thrown into " the portion of the field of Naboth,"
reminding an attendant that, as long ago as when they
had ridden together in the train of Ahab, " the Lord
laid this burden upon him." Ahaziah, too, was pur
sued by command of the usurper, and being wounded
in his retreat, " fled to Megiddo, and died there " ; his
body was conveyed to Jerusalem, and buried " in his

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 115
sepulchre with his fathers in the city of David."
When Jezebel heard that Jehu was entering the royal
city in triumph, she attired herself with queenly mag
nificence, and, looking out at a window, reviled him as
he passed. He bade her attendants throw her down,
and she was killed by the fall, and her blood stained
his horse's hoofs. Having banqueted, he gave direc
tions to seek the " cursed woman, and bury her, for
she is a king's daughter " ; but so miserably had
her body been mutilated and defaced, that the messen
gers " found no more of her than the skull, and the
feet, and the palms of her hands " ; all which Jehu
remarked to be in fulfilment of " the word of the
Lord,, which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tish
bite." *

* 2 Kings ix. 1-37. — "Elisha the prophet called one of the children
of the prophets," &c. (I). According to 1 Kings xix. 16, Elijah received
a commission to this duty ; but, according to the relation here, it remained to
be performed by another person under the direction of Elisha. — " The dogs
shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel " (10) ; comp. 1 Kings xxi. 23,
" by the wall of Jezreel." In the former case the Hebrew word is p|?ri3 ;
in the latter, Sn3. — " They hasted, and took every man his garment, and
put it under him," &c. (13) ; that is, They piled their rich vestments into
a sort of temporary throne. — " The blood of Naboth and the blood of his
sons "(26) ; comp. 1 Kings xxi. 13, where we read of no outrage upon
Naboth's family. — "'I will requite thee in this plat,' saith the Lord"
(ibid.) ; comp. 1 Kings xxi. 19, where the threat seems to be represented
as uttered against Ahab individually ; and so it appears to have been under
stood by the writer of 1 Kings xxii. 38, who accordingly sought its fulfil
ment in a different occurrence from that here related. — " They did so at
the going up to Gur, which is by Ibleam ; and he fled to Megiddo " (27).
The name Gur does not occur elsewhere. Ibleam and Megiddo were in
the territory of Manasseh, west of the Jordan, so that Ahaziah must have
made good his flight for a considerable distance (comp. Josh. xvii. 11). —
" In the eleventh year of Joram, the son of Ahab, began Ahaziah to reign "
(29) ; in the twelfth year, according to viii. 25. — " Had Zimri peace, who
slew his master?" (31); comp. 1 Kings xvi. 9-11, 18. — " The carcass
of Jezebel shall be as dung," &c. (37); perhaps these are intended to be
represented as words of Jehu himself ; at all events we do not find them
ascribed to Elijah in 1 Kings xxi. 23.

116 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25. [LECT.
The new king's next proceeding was to extirpate
the line of his predecessor on the throne. He first
addressed an ironical letter " unto the rulers of Jez
reel, to the elders, and to them that brought up
Ahab's children," proposing to them that, as they had
the advantage of a stronghold, and a well-appointed
military force, they should select the most competent
among their wards, seat him on his father's throne,
and establish him there by war. They understood the
hint, and all hastened to send in their adhesion to Je
hu. A second message from him directed them to
put the young princes to death, and bring their heads
to him the next day at Jezreel. The order was execut
ed; and Jehu, learning that the heads had arrived in
baskets, directed them to be piled "in two heaps at
the entering in of the gate until the morning." He
then appeared at the gate, and addressed the people,
avowing his conspiracy against Joram, but disclaiming
any participation in the murder of the children, at the
same time declaring that it was. but a fulfilment of
those predictions concerning the doom of the royal
line, which Jehovah " spake by his servant Elijah."
He then proceeded to complete his work by putting
to death " all that remained of the house of Ahab in
Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolk, and
his priests, until he left him none remaining."
On his way to Samaria, he fell in with certain
brethren of Ahaziah, who told him that, having heard
of that monarch's death, they were on their way to
offer their homage to his children. He ordered his
attendants to seize and put them to death, which they
did, to the number of forty-two victims.
Continuing his journey, he was accosted by Jehona-
dab, the son of Rechab, whom, after mutual profes
sions of friendship, he seated by his side in his chari-

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 117
ot, inviting him to go and see his " zeal for the Lord."
This was accordingly manifested by his proceeding
to slay "all that remained unto Ahab in Samaria,
till he had destroyed him, according to the saying of
the Lord, which he spake to Elijah."
His next object was to rid the nation of the proph
ets, and the idolatrous service, of Baal. To this end,
professing himself a zealous devotee of the Phoe
nician god, he invited all his priests and votaries to
assemble for a great holiday and sacrifice, threatening
with death any who should absent themselves. The
temple of the false deity was crowded "full from
one end to another" with his worshippers, all ar
rayed, by the liberal provision of Jehu, in appro
priate vestments. Proclamation was made by Jehu
and Jehonadab to all the worshippers of Jehovah to
withdraw. A guard of eighty men was then posted
at the gate, and directed to put to death every man.
Accordingly, as soon as the sacrifice was finished, this
party pushed its way into the dense crowd within, and
left not one man alive. They then stripped the idol's
temple, carried out and burned the images, and dese
crated the building by converting it to the most offen
sive use.
Though " from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of
Nebat, who made Israel to sin, Jehu departed not,"
yet because of his merits in the destruction of the
worship of Baal, and of the family of Ahab, Jeho
vah is said to have made him a promise that his
dynasty should retain through four generations posses- •
sion of the throne of Israel. As to foreign relations,
his was an unprosperous reign. The Syrians possessed
themselves of all, or nearly all, of the territory of his
three tribes on the east side of the Jordan. After
twenty-eight years of troubled sway, he " slept with

118 2 KINGS I. l.-XIII. 25. [LECT.
his fathers, and they buried him in Samaria, and Je-
hoahaz his son reigned in' his stead." *
In Judah there had been enacted a tragedy not less
horrid, and even more unnatural, than that which had
cut off the royal family of Israel. When Athaliah,
daughter of Jezebel, and mother of Ahaziah, " saw
that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all
the seed royal," and seized for herself the vacant
throne. One only of the late king's sons, Joash, an
infant a year old, was rescued by his father's sister
Jehosheba, and, by her and the high-priest Jehoiada,
was secreted for six years with his nurse in the pre
cincts of the temple. At the end of that time, " Je
hoiada sent and fetched the rulers over hundreds,
with, the captains and the guard, and brought them to

* 2 Kings x. 1 - 36. — " He went out, and stood, and said to all the people,
' Ye be righteous,' " &c. (9). This he said ironically, the force of it being,
Innocent men that ye are, and shocked by my violent proceedings against
my master, yet who was it that put to death these his children? Did they
not fall by the hands of men of your own number? — " The Lord hath
done that which he spake by his servant Elijah" (10). It is easy to see
that, when Jehu and other kings had committed murders for their own pur
poses, there would be those about them ready to defend and sanctify their
violence by inventing stories to show that it was in accomplishment of God's
will, and of predictions of his servants ; and herein we have a full explana
tion of the origin of such passages as 1 Kings xvi. 1 et seq. (comp. 11, 12),
xx. 42, xxi. 19 (comp. 2 Kings ix. 24-26, x. 10), 23 (comp. 2 Kings ix.
36, x. 17), et al. h. m. — " At the shearing-house" (12) ; apparently some
well-known place, where flocks were collected at the shearing season ; the
word occurs nowhere else. — " Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy
heart ? " ( 15) ; that is, Are my esteem and affection for you reciprocated ? —
" Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel " (28). It was his interest to do
' so, for the priests of that worship, who had been patronized by Jezebel and
the house of Ahab, might be expected to prove friends to the proscribed
dynasty, and enemies to the usurper of its throne. In point of fact, we read
no more, after this time, of a public worship of the Phoenician god. — " In
those days the Lord began to cut Israel short, and Hazael smote them,"
&c. (32, 33). If in this incursion Hazael exercised any particular sever
ity, which, however, we are not told, it probably originated the narrative
in viii. 12.

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 119
him into the house of the Lord, and made a covenant
with them, and took an oath df them in the house of
the Lord, and showed them the king's son."
The force thus mustered, equipped by Jehoiada
with "King David's spears and shields, that were
in the temple of the Lord," was posted in five divisions,
at the principal avenues of the palace and the temple,
and about the person of the young king. The con
spiracy succeeded. Jehoiada and his confederates had
in secret matured their plans for a pompous ceremony
of coronation. " And the guard stood, every man with
his weapons in his hand, round about the king, from
the right corner of the temple to the left corner of
the temple, along by the altar and the temple. And he
brought forth the king's son, and put the crown upon
him, and gave him the testimony ; and they made him
king, and anointed him ; and they clapped their hands,
and said, ' God save the king.' " Athaliah, hearing
the clamor from her palace, " came to the people into
the temple." The sound of" the trumpets, and the
sight of her young grandson receiving the homage of
the princes, disclosed to her the truth, and " she rent
her clothes, and cried, ' Treason, treason.' " By the
order of Jehoiada, she was forthwith dragged without
the sacred inclosure, and put to death. He proceeded
to make the necessary arrangements for repairing
the evils of the late usurpation, and for the order of
the kingdom, and the satisfaction of the subjects.
" He made a covenant between the Lord and the king
and the people, that they should be the Lord's peo
ple; between the king also and the people." He
caused the young monarch to be installed in state in
the palace of his fathers, and " appointed officers over
the house of the Lord." The temple of Baal was
destroyed, his altars and images were broken in pieces,

120 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25. [LECT.
and his chief priest Mattan put to death. "And
all the people of the la'nd rejoiced, and the city was
in quiet." *
The new king's reign of forty years was substan
tially a virtuous and religious one, as long as he con
tinued to enjoy the guidance and support of the high-
priest Jehoiada, though he failed to suppress entirely
the idolatrous practices which had acquired such a
hold on the taste of the nation. He gave particular
attention to the repair of the decayed temple, agree
ing with the priests that they should make it their
charge, and to defray the cost should receive both
the assessed and the voluntary offerings of worship
pers. Twenty-three years, however, of his reign had
passed, and the work was still delayed ; and a new
arrangement was made, for the oblations to be dropped
into a chest at the entrance of the sacred precincts,
and removed thence and counted from time to time,
as often as it was full, by the king's scribe and the
high-priest, to be paid directly to the artisans and
those who supplied materials. So trusty were those
persons, that it was not necessary so much as to have
any reckoning with them for the money they re
ceived. No part of this appropriation was expended
on "bowls of silver, snuffers, basins, trumpets, any
vessels of gold, or vessels of silver." The priests re
tained no part of the sacred revenue for themselves,
except " the trespass money and sin money."
Hazael, king of Syria, having taken the Philistine
city of Gath, threatened to pursue his march to Je-

* 2 Kings xi. 1-21. — " King David's spears and shields, that were in
the temple of the Lord " (10) ; we have not before read of any depository
of the arms of David's age in the temple. — " He brought forth the king's
son, and put the crown upon him, and gave him the testimony " [nnj;.]
(12) ; probably the book of the Law (comp. Ex. xxv. 21).

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 121
rusalem. Jehoash, despairing of any successful re
sistance to him in arms, bought him off with the bribe
of " all the hallowed things that Jehoshaphat, and
Jehoram, and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah,
had dedicated, and his own hallowed things, and all
the gold that was found in the treasures of the house
of the Lord, and in the king's house." He was slain in
a conspiracy, " and they buried him with his fathers,
in the city of David, and Amaziah his son reigned
in his stead." *
The reign of Jehoahaz, King of Israel, lasted seven
teen years. His policy was after the pattern of that
of " Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which made Israel
to sin." It was punished by frequent and wasting
incursions of the Syrians, who, though worsted at
times when " Jehoahaz besought the Lord," made
the Israelites " like the dust by threshing," and re
duced them to such weakness, that there remained only
a military force of " fifty horsemen, and ten chariots,
and ten thousand footmen." The successor of Je
hoahaz, his son Jehoash, reigned sixteen years, with
no better reputation. Nothing else is recorded of
him in this the appropriate place, except his having
waged a war with Amaziah, king of Judah, (of which
war some account is given further on, in the sketch
of the history of Amaziah,) his having found a
peaceful burial with his fathers in Samaria, and
the incidents and. results of an interview which
he had with Elisha, during that prophet's " sickness,
whereof he died." As he bent weeping over the
* 2 Kings xii. 1-21. — "The money that every man is set at" (4);
comp. Lev. xxvii. 2, el seq. — " The trespass money and sin money 
was the priest's" (16) ; comp. Lev. v. 15, 16. — "Hazael  fought
against Gath, and took it" (17) ; according to 1 Chron. xviii. 1, this Phi
listine city had been taken by David. — " The house of Millo" (20) ; comp.
2 Sam. v. 9.
VOL. III. 11

122 2 KINGS I. 1. — XIII. 25. [LECT.
feeble form of the aged man, and bewailing the im
pending bereavement of Israel, Elisha placed his
hands upon the king's, and bade him discharge an
arrow from a window towards the east. He shot,
and the prophet told him that it was " the arrow of
the Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance
from Syria," and that it foreshadowed a bloody de
feat which the cruel invaders should sustain at Aphek.
Again Elisha told him to strike with a bundle of
arrows on the ground. "And he smote thrice, and
stayed " ; whereat " the man of God was wroth," and
told him that he should now win only three battles,
whereas, had he struck five or six times, it would
have insured him that number of victories. " Hazael,
king of Syria, oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoa
haz," but he being dead, the Lord " would not destroy
them, neither cast he them from his presence as yet,"
and Jehoash, successful in three encounters, as was
foretold, " took again out of the hand of Benhadad,
the son of Hazael, the cities which he had taken out
of the hand of Jehoahaz, his father, by war." The
crowning wonder connected with Elisha's history oc
curred after his death. A party, disturbed in their
preparations for the burial of a dead body by the ap
proach of a predatory band of Moabites, threw it has
tily into the prophet's sepulchre. " And when the man
was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he re
vived, and stood up on his feet." *

* 2 Kings xiii. 1-25. — "In the «Aree-and-twentieth year of Joash,
 Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, began to reign " (1). But, according
to previous statements, Jehu, whom Jehoahaz succeeded, died in the twenty-
first year of Joash (comp. x. 36; xii. 1). — " And the Lord gave Israel a
saviour," &c. (5) ; probably Joash is meant (comp. 25). — "In the thirty-
and-seventh year of Joash, king of Judah, began Jehoash, the son of Jeho
ahaz, to reign " (10). But if (comp. 1) Jehoahaz came to the throne in the
twenty-third year of Joash, and reigned seventeen years, it was in the forti-

XLL] THE TIME OF ELISHA. 123
eth year of Joash that the son of Jehoahaz succeeded. — " The chariot of
Israel, and the horsemen thereof" (14) ; comp. ii. 12. — " He said, ' Open
the window eastward ' " (17) ; the Syrian conquests had been in that direc
tion, in the country on the other side of the Jordan (comp. x. 33). — " Thou
shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek" (ibid.) ; the same place where a great
victory had been formerly obtained (comp. 1 Kings xx. 29, 30) ; perhaps
we may render, Thou shalt smite them after the manner of Aphek, or with
an " Aphek " overthrow ; as people speak now of " a Waterloo defeat." —
"Then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it" (19) ; but this
had been already promised (comp. 17). — " Now thou shalt smite Syria but
thrice" (ibid.). For the probable origin of these alleged predictions, it is
natural to look to some period subsequent to the events which accomplished
them ; comp. 25.

124 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.

LECTURE XLII.
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS.
2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30.
Reign of Amaziah in Judah. — His Conquest of Idumea. — His
Defeat by Jehoash, and Death. — Reigns of Azariah, Jotham,
and Ahaz, in Judah, and of Jeroboam II., Zachariah, Shallum,
Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah, and Hoshea, in Israel. — Wars of Is
rael and Syria against Assyria and Judah. — Idolatries of Ahaz.
— Conquest of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians. — Trans
portation of the Inhabitants, and Introduction of New Colonists.
— Reign of Hezekiah in Judah. — Assyrian Invasion. — Confer
ence of Hezekiah with Isaiah. — Destruction of the Assyrian
Army. — Sickness and Cure of Hezekiah. — Retrocession of the
Sun. — Embassy from Babylon. — Idolatries of Manasseh and Amon.
— Religious Administration of Josiah. — Discovery of the Book
of the Law. — Renewal of the National Covenant, and Prose
cution of Reforms. — Defeat and Death of Josiah. — Reigns of
Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah. — Sack of the City and Tem
ple. — Vice-Royalty of Gedaliah. — Promotion of Jehoiachin. —
Babylonish Captivity.
From the point at which we have now arrived, the
author hastens to the close of his work. He con
denses into twelve chapters the history of two hundred
and fifty years ; and more than half of this compen
dious narrative is taken up with an account of the
Assyrian conquest of Israel, and of single transactions
in the three reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah.
Amaziah, son of Joash, and his successor in the
kingdom of Judah, came to the throne when twenty-
five years of age, and reigned twenty-nine years. In
a disposition of rectitude and piety, but an irresolute

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 125
policy, which tolerated the idolatrous propensities of
the people, his character and administration resem
bled those of his father. In taking vengeance for the
late king's death, it is observed that he recognized a
principle of the law of Moses, designed to restrain the
savage vindictiveness of those ancient times, when the
blood of whole families was made to expiate the of
fence of their head. Amaziah " slew his servants
which had slain the king his father, but the children
of the murderers he slew not."
A successful inroad into Idumaea gave Amaziah a
taste for war, and a confidence in his valor and con
duct. He sent a defiance to the king of Israel, who,
having first answered it with a taunting remonstrance,
at length led his army into the territory of Judah. He
obtained a victory, in which Amaziah was taken pris
oner, and immediately pushed forward to Jerusalem,
where he threw down a part of the city wall and rifled
the temple and the royal palace of their treasures,
after which, taking hostages with him from the con
quered country, he returned to Samaria, where he died
and was buried. Amaziah survived him fifteen years.
A conspiracy at Jerusalem drove him to Lachish.
There he was overtaken and put to death. " And they
brought him on horses ; and he was buried at Jeru
salem with his fathers in the city of David."
His son, Azariah, sixteen years of age, next filled
the throne of Judah. His long reign of fifty-two years
is not related to have been marked by any memorable
action, except the recovery and reconstruction of the
city of Elath on the Red Sea. His contemporary in
Israel, Jeroboam II. , followed, as to internal adminis
tration, the course of the first monarch of his name.
In war, he obtained some important successes against
the Syrians, " according to the word of the Lord God
11*

126 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.
of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant
Jonah, the son of Amittai," a prophet whose predic
tions, here referred to, have not been transmitted
to our times.*
As to the religious administration of his govern
ment, the king of Judah, Azariah, walked in the
* 2 Kings xiv. 1-29. — "In the second year of Joash, son of Jehoa
haz, king of Israel, reigned Amaziah," &c. (1). Joash of Israel ascended'
the throne in the thirty-seventh year of Joash of Judah (comp. xiii. 10),
who reigned forty years (comp. xii. 1). From these data it follows that the
former came to the throne three years at least before the latter died, and the
second year of the former was from one to two years before the latter died.
Yet in the second year of the former (xiv. 1) Amaziah is said (xii. 21) to
have succeeded the latter. — " According to that which is written in the book
of the law of Moses," &c. (6) ; comp. Deut. xxiv. 16. — "He  took
Selah," &c. (7). Selah, j?Sd, means the rock. Probably the city of Petra
is intended, the capital of Idumsa, the extraordinary ruins of which are at
this day visited by travellers. — " The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to
the cedar," &c. (9). The application of this apologue is not apparent.
Understanding Joash to have meant himself by the wild beast, it is not ob
vious what is intended by the cedar, or by the offer of a matrimonial alli
ance, which was an entirely different proposal from what Amaziah had made.
— " Beth-shemesh, which belongeth to Judah " (11) ; a Levitical city, about
thirty miles northwest of Jerusalem ; comp. Josh. xv. 10 ; xxi. 16 ; 1 Sam.
vi. 9, et seq. — " He fled to Lachish " (19); a city in the south of Judah
(comp. Josh. x. 23; xv. 39). — "He built Elath, and restored it to Ju
dah " (22) ; i. e. after its loss in the time of Joram (comp. viii. 20). — " He
restored the coast of Israel, from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the
plain" (25). That is, he recovered the country east of the Jordan, along
the whole length of Israel ; for on the northern border of the Israelitish ter
ritory was the Syrian city of Damascus, and the southern boundary of Is
rael met the northern point of the Dead Sea, or " Sea of the Plain." 
"Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher "
(ibid.) ; of whom there will be occasion to speak particularly in another place.
— " There was not any shut up, nor any left " (26) ; this seems to be a sort
of idiomatic expression for any resource whatever; any resource, whether of
such a kind as is carefully husbanded (shut up) , or such as is less regarded
(comp. Deut. xxxii. 36). — "He recovered Damascus" (28) ; where David
had formerly had a garrison (comp. 2 Sam. viii. 6). — " Which belonged to
Judah, for Israel " (ibid). The words italicized have nothing in the orig
inal corresponding to them. They were introduced by our translators in
order to give some sense to the words " to Judah," words which (probably
as finding it impossible to explain them) the authors of the Syriac and Ara
bic versions have omitted.

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 127
steps of his father. Afflicted with a leprosy during
a great part of his life, he " dwelt in a several house,"
while the affairs of the kingdom were conducted by
his son Jotham, who at length succeeded him, and
continued to rule on the same principles. Meantime
Zachariah, son of Jeroboam, had become king of Is
rael. In his short reign of six months, " he departed
not from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat." He
was slain in an insurrection, the prediction that the
dynasty of Jehu should retain the sovereignty through
only four generations being fulfilled in him; and
Shallum, the chief conspirator, took possession of the
throne. He retained his ill-gotten power but a month,
at the end of which time he met at the hands of Me
nahem the same doom that he had inflicted on his
master. In his proceedings for the establishment of
his power, he inflicted great cruelties on some cities
which had resisted his usurpation, and " did that which
was evil in the sight of the Lord," by encouraging a
forbidden worship, after the manner of most of his
predecessors. In his reign of ten years occurred the first invasion
of the Assyrians. The old empire of Assyria, com
prehending Babylon, had now been dismembered ; and
Pul, the first king of the new state henceforward
called by that name, led his well-disciplined hosts in
to the territory of Israel. Menahem, being in no con
dition to resist his demands, bribed him to withdraw
with the sum of a thousand talents of silver, exacted
from " all the mighty men of wealth," at the rate of
fifty silver shekels each. Pekahiah, his son, next
reigned for two years, persevering in his father's
courses. He too fell in a rebellion, headed by " Pe-
kah, the son of Remaliah, a captain of his." Pekah's
reign of twenty years came to a similar termination,

128 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.
the successful rebel being now Hoshea, the son of
Elah. During Pekah's rule a second invasion of the
Assyrians took place, under Tiglath-pileser, the son of
Pul. He overran great part of the territory of the
northern tribes, and carried away numbers of their
people into bondage. Meanwhile the government of
the good Jotham, in Judah, which lasted sixteen years,
was disturbed by similar hostile incursions from the
Israelites and Syrians.*
Ahaz, son of Jotham, reigned as long as his father,
but in a spirit the opposite of his, for he fell into the
most impious practices of the monarchs of the north
ern kingdom, even to the odious extent of sacrificing
* 2 Kings xv. 1 - 38. — " In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam,
king of Israel, began Azariah  foreign" (1) ; but, according to
xiv. 17, Amaziah, Azariah's father, died when Jeroboam had only reigned
fifteen years. — "In the thirty and eighth year of Azariah, king of Judah,
did Zachariah, the son of Jeroboam, reign " (8). And with this agrees
23 (comp. 13, 17). But according to previous statements, Azariah had
reigned only twenty-five years at the time of Zachariah's accession ; for
Jeroboam came to the throne in the fifteenth year of Amaziah (xiv. 23), who
reigned twenty-nine years (xiv. 2) ; so that the last fourteen years of Amaziah
were simultaneous with the first fourteen of Jeroboam, and the last twenty-
seven of Jeroboam (comp. xiv. 23) were simultaneous with the first twenty-
seven (not as in xv. 8, the first thirty-seven) of Azariah. — " This was the
word of the Lord which he spake unto Jehu," &c. (12) ; comp. x. 30. —
" Uzziah, king of Judah " (13). By this different name Azariah is called in
verses 30, 32, and 34, as well as here. — " Menahem, the son of Gadi, went up
from Tirzah" (14); the city where the founder of the northern monarchy had
held his court ; comp. 1 Kings xiv. 17. — "Menahem smote Tiphsah, and
all that were therein," &c. (16). We know no other Tiphsah than that upon
the Euphrates, mentioned in 1 Kings iv. 24. If that was the place in the
writer's mind, he meant to attribute to Menahem very extensive ravages. —
" Of each man fifty shekels of silver " (20). A talent was three thou
sand shekels ; so that, at fifty shekels each, " the mighty men of wealth "
assessed to furnish a thousand talents must have been in number sixty
thousand. — " Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and
Hazor " (29) ; all of them cities in the territory of Naphtali, the border tribe
to the. northeast, extending to within thirty miles of Damascus.  "He
[Jotham] reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem " (33) ; comp. 32, xvi. 1 ; but
Hoshea is said (30) to have come to the throne of Israel in Jotham's twen
tieth year.

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 129
his own son as a burnt-offering to an idol-god. Be
sieged by an allied army of the Israelites and Syrians,
which latter nation made a permanent conquest of the
important Jewish colony of Elath, Ahaz imprudently
called in the aid of the Assyrians under Tiglath-pile
ser, purchasing it with " the silver and gold that was
found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures
of the king's house." The Assyrian monarch invaded
Syria, slew its king, Rezin, took its capital city, and
carried away many of its people captive. At Damas
cus he was visited by Ahaz, who learned there some
lessons by which he was tempted to profane the wor
ship at Jerusalem. Pleased with an altar at Damas
cus, he sent a copy to Urijah the priest, who, before
the return of Ahaz, had one made after the same pat
tern, and erected it instead of the brazen altar, which
had stood since Solomon's time in the temple court,
and which he displaced for the purpose. On this al
tar the king sacrificed when he came back to Jerusa
lem, and ordered that thenceforward it should be the
scene of those solemnities. He broke up some of the
costly parts of the ancient furniture of the temple, to
appropriate their valuable materials to the service of
his new ally. At length he " slept with his fathers,
and was buried with his fathers in the city of David ;
and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead." *
* 2 Kings xvi. 1-20. — "Rezin, king of Syria, recovered Elath to
Syria" (6) ; perhaps, instead of D^N, Syria, we should read ms, Edom;
for Elath, on the Red Sea, was in the country of the Edomites, from whom
it had been taken by Azariah ; comp. xiv. 22. But all the ancient versions
agree with the Hebrew, though the Septuagint reads Idumaans instead of
Syrians in the next clause. — " The king of Assyria  carried the
people of it captive to Kir (9) ; comp. Vol. II. p. 397. — " King Ahaz cut
off the borders of the bases," &c. (17) ; comp. 1 Kings vii. 28, et seq. —
" The covert for the Sabbath," &c. (18) ; perhaps an inclosed way or hall,
roofed with metal, which he stripped off to add to his subsidy ; comp. xviii.
16.

130 2 KINGS XIV. 1. - XXV. 30. [LECT.
Hoshea, who by his successful insurrection against
Pekah had become king of Israel, " did that which
was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings
of Israel that were before him." The Assyrians con
tinued to extend their encroachments upon his domin
ions, and Hoshea became an acknowledged tributary
of Shalmaneser, son of the late monarch of that rising
empire. At length, in the sixth year of his reign, un
der a charge of irregularity in the payment of his an
nual subsidies, and of a traitorous correspondence
with So, king of Egypt, he was arrested and impris
oned, and the armies of Assyria spread themselves
over the country. At the end of three years the con
quest was complete. " The king of Assyria took
Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and
placed them in Halah, and in Habor by the river of
Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes."
This great catastrophe of the overthrow of the
northern kingdom, after a struggling existence of two
hundred and fifty years, leads the historian to reflect
upon its cause; and, like the author of the book of
Judges when treating of similar events, he finds it in
that unfaithfulness to Jehovah, their deliverer from the
thraldom of Egypt, of which, following the practices
of their idolatrous neighbours, the people had been
guilty.* This it was, he says, which, agreeably to
prophetic warnings, had in the first place occasioned
the division of the tribes in the time of the son of
Solomon, then the subjugation and dispersion of the
nation of Israel, and at length, after another century
of Divine forbearance, the. similar ruin of the sister
kingdom. To repeople the solitude which his ravage had made,
* Judges ii. 10 - 19.

XLIL] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 131
the king of Assyria transported numbers of settlers
from his hereditary Mesopotamian provinces. Igno
rant of the claims of the god of the soil, they provoked
him by withholding his due worship, and " the Lord
sent lions among them, which slew some of them."
They acquainted their master with their distress
and its cause, and he selected from his Jewish cap
tives a priest to impart to them the necessary knowl
edge of the local faith and ritual. He came and es
tablished himself in Bethel for the purpose ; but his
instructions were but partially efficacious ; the priestly
office was conferred on the lowest of the people ; the
inhabitants of various cities "made gods of their
own," and some of them "burned their children in
fire." This mongrel worship prevailed among their
descendants down to the writer's time. " Unto this
day they do after the former manners  These
nations feared the Lord, and served their graven ima
ges, both their children and their children's children ;
as did their fathers, so do they, unto this day." *
The pious young King Hezekiah had in the mean
time succeeded his father Ahaz on the throne of Ju
dah. In his horror of image-worship, he even " brake
* 2 Kings xvii. 1 -41. — " In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah,
began Hoshea, the son of Elah, to reign " (1) ; but Hoshea assassinated and
succeeded Pekah, and, according to xv. 27 (comp. xvi. 1) Pekah's death
was contemporaneous with the end of the third year of Ahaz. Comp. also
xv. 30, 33. — " He had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt " (4) ; the
Egyptian chronology is too unsettled to admit of determining with any cer
tainty what Egyptian monarch is here intended. — " The king of Assyria
 placed them in Halah, and in Habor by the river of Gozan " (6) ;
rather, " on the Habor, a river of Gozan." The Habor, the Chebar of
Ezekiel, empties into the Euphrates, on its left bank, in latitude 34° 20'.
Ptolemy (" Geog." Lib. V. § 18) calls the country lying along the Chaboras
by the name of Gauzanitis (quasi Habor and Gozan). The situation of Halah
can only be guessed at from the connection in which it is named. — " The
Lord rejected all the seed of Israel," &c. (20) ; that is, ultimately, the king
dom of Judah as well as that of the northern tribes ; comp. 18, 19.

132 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.
in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made " ;
and such was his zeal for reform, as to lead the histo
rian to record, that " after him was none like him
among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were be
fore him." The Divine favor attended him, " and he
prospered whithersoever he went forth."
He conducted a successful expedition into the coast
country of the Philistines, but, in a revolt against the
king of Assyria, eight years after the capture by that
monarch of the capital of the northern tribes, he was
less fortunate. Sennacherib assailed and took his for
tified cities, and Hezekiah was fain to purchase a
peace by humble submission, and the payment of a
heavy tribute. Besides a large specific contribution,
" Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in
the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the'
king's house," and " cut off the gold from the doors of
the temple of the Lord, and from the pillars." Not
content with the injuries and degradation already in
flicted, Sennacherib sent an embassy to Jerusalem
" with a great host " to demand further submissions.
Appearing before the walls, and met there by some of
Hezekiah's high courtiers, Rab-shakeh, the Assyrian
commander, after some opprobrious language, refused
further conference with these officers, and addressed
himself directly, in the Hebrew language, to the peo
ple within hearing on the wall, inviting them to pur
chase tranquillity at home till it should please the king
of Assyria to transport them elsewhere, like their
northern brethren, and representing that it was in
vain for them to trust either in their sovereign, or in
their national god, who was no more able to afford
protection to them than the gods of Hamath, Arpad,
and Sepharvaim had proved to extend it to their vota
ries. "The people held their peace, and answered

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF' THE KINGDOMS. 133
him not a word ; for the king's commandment was,
saying, 'Answer him not.'" The messengers, who
would have confined the conference to themselves and
to the Syrian language, finding all expostulation and
entreaty vain, " came to Hezekiah, with their clothes
rent, and told him the words of Rab-shakeh." *
In his consternation and distress, Hezekiah, in the
garments of mourning, betook himself to the temple,
whence he sent to implore " Isaiah the prophet, the
son of Amoz," to intercede with Jehovah for his pro
tection. Isaiah returned an encouraging message, to
the effect that the king should dismiss his solicitude,
for the discomfiture and death of his enemy were
* 2 Kings xviii. 1-37. — " In the third year of Hoshea  Heze
kiah  began to reign " (1) ; but Hoshea came to the throne in the
twelfth year of Ahaz (comp. xvii. 1.), who reigned sixteen years (comp.
xvi. 2) ; accordingly the third year of Hoshea, specified here as the time of
Hezekiah's accession, corresponded with the second year before the death of
Ahaz. — ' ' Twenty and five years old was he when he began to reign " (2) .
But Ahaz died at the age of thirty-six (comp. xvi. 2) ; accordingly Heze
kiah was born when his father was only eleven years old. — " He called it
Nehushtan " (4) ; quasi, " a senseless mass of brass " ; or it may be rendered,
they called it, &c. ; the word Nehushtan , 1IWD3, is derived from n#rO, brass,
with the addition of a formative syllable. — " It came to pass in the fourth
year," &c. (9 - 12) ; these verses are almost a repetition of xvii. 5-7. —
"Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah," &c. (13); the passage
which begins here, and ends at xx. 19, is almost word for word the same
with Isaiah, chaps, xxxvi. - xxxix. If that portion of the book of Isaiah
which closes with the thirty-ninth chapter took its present form and place
before the composition of the Books of Kings, a probable inference would
be, that the compiler of the latter book drew from the former the materials
of this part of his history ; and the credibility of it accordingly would re
solve itself into the credibility of the narrative in Isaiah. Which compiler
borrowed from the other, or whether both drew from a common source, is a
question to be more conveniently considered in connection with the book of
Isaiah. — "Hezekiah  sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish"
(14); a place apparently in the southern part of Hezekiah's territory;
comp. Josh. x. 23 ; xv. 39. — " Is not that he, whose high places and
whose altars HezekiaJi hath taken away?" (22); these followers erro
neously supposed that the " groves," &c, which Hezekiah had suppressed
(comp. 4) , were places of worship for the national God.
VOL. III. 12

134 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.
nigh at hand. Rab-shakeh, returning from Jerusalem,
found his master conducting the siege of Libnah, one
of the southern strongholds of Judah, which it would
seem that he had hastened to secure with a view to,
intercept succours which Hezekiah was expecting from
Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia. Receiving from him
another arrogant summons, Hezekiah again went to
the temple,, and fervently prayed for the relief which
in such straits only Jehovah could afford. He was
again reassured by a message from Isaiah, who de
clared, in the language of an animated ode, that Je
hovah would keep his favored city harmless, and put
its insolent invader to rout and shame. " And it
came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord
went out. and smote in the camp of the Assyrians
an hundred fourscore and five thousand ; and when
they arose early in the morning, behold, they were
all dead corpses." Sennacherib, retiring in dismay to
his capital, was assassinated by two of his sons, while
worshipping in the temple of one of his idols. The
parricides fled from the country, and another son,
Esarhaddon, succeeded to the throne.*

* 2 Kings xix. 1-37. — " The children are come to the birth," &c. (3) ;
that is, the time is one of anxiety and peril, requiring an energy which ap
pears to be wanting. — " Behold, I will send a blast upon him," &c. (7) ; the
writer's meaning seems to be that Isaiah apprised Hezekiah beforehand of
the fate which at. the end of the chapter is said to have befallen Sennache
rib and his forces. — " He heard say of Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, ' Be-
hpld, he is come out to fight against thee' " (9). " This prince appears
to «e the same whom Strabo calls TeapjcS, with the qualification of Ethio
pian, and whom he describes as pushing his conquests even into Europe.
 The conformity of names seems also to establish his identity with
Tarcus, orTaracus, third king of the twenty-fifth. dynasty of Manetho, who
in fact calls him an Ethiopian. Such was the opinion of many chronolo-
gists ; and it is also that of Champollion, who has read his name (Tarak)
upon many monuments. Mr. Salt has likewise found, the name upon vari
ous edifices in Egypt and in Ethiopia." (Greppo, "Essay," &c, p. 126.) 
1 And this shall be a sign unto thee," &c. (29) ; the prophet must here be

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 135
Hezekiah being attacked with dangerous illness,
the prophet Isaiah visited him, and exhorted him, by
the Divine command, to make his last arrangements,
for the malady was to prove fatal. On the earnest
entreaty of the monarch, who pleaded his eminent
deserts, the decree was revoked, and Isaiah, who was
already departing from the palace, was directed to re
turn, and say that in three days the king should be
sufficiently recovered to worship at the temple ; that
his life should be prolonged through another fifteen
years ; and that for David's sake Jerusalem should be
spared from falling into the hands of the Assyrian in
vader. A lump of figs, applied by Isaiah's order to an
eruption with which Hezekiah was afflicted, proved
the means of his cure. Impatient to know the certain
ty of the promise, that within three days he should be
able to rise from his sick-bed, and visit the temple, he
asked of Isaiah a token to that effect. The prophet
proposed to him to choose whether the sun's shadow
on the dial in his palace court should move forward
or backward ten degrees ; and, on his electing the lat
ter, " Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord, and he
brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which
it had gone down."
understood as turning to address Hezekiah, in one of those rapid and unmarked
transitions so common in Hebrew poetry. — " Ye shall eat this year," &c.
(ibid.) ; it does not appear how the author could have understood that this
supply which the Lord was to send through three successive years was
represented by Isaiah as " a sign " of a miraculous deliverance which came
on the very night of the prediction (comp. 35) ; the representation is incon
gruous. — " The angel of the Lord went out and smote," &c. (35). Herod
otus has a different version of what may have been originally the same
story. He relates (Lib. II. § 141) that in a war between the Egyptian king
Sethon or Sethosis, and Sennacherib, the Assyrian, while the forces of
the latter lay before Pelusium, at the mouth of the Nile, their quivers and
bow-strings, and the thongs of their shields, were devoured one night by an
enormous number of rats, causing their immediate retreat, with great loss.

136 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.
At this time Hezekiah's imprudence occasioned or
encouraged the machinations of a new enemy. Bero-
dach-baladan, king of Babylon, sent some of his cour
tiers with presents to congratulate him on the restora
tion of his health, and the gratified and unsuspicious
king made a display to them of the rich contents of his
treasury ; " there was nothing in his house, nor in all
his dominion, that Hezekiah showed them not." Isa
iah saw the consequences of this ostentatious folly,
and warned him that the days should come when all
his treasures should be carried away to Babylon as
spoil, and all his posterity as prisoners and slaves.
Hezekiah expressed his satisfaction that at least these
calamities were not to come in his own time. At the
age of fifty-four, he " slept with his fathers, and Ma
nasseh his son reigned in his stead." *
The long and evil reign of Manasseh speeded the
decline of the fated nation. Ascending the throne at
the age of twelve years, he deserted, in the perverse
folly of his youth, the steps of his pious father, and
dealt in the worst practices of the wicked Ahab. He
set up idolatrous altars and images in the very pre
cincts of the temple, and " made his son pass through
the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments,
and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards." " More-
* 2 Kings xx. 1-21. — "He brought the shadow ten degrees back
ward," &c. (11) ; this amazing miracle, which has given rise to so vast an
amount of discussion, is represented by the writer to have taken place
merely to satisfy Hezekiah's mind of the certainty of an event which he
would only have to wait for three days ; which God himself, by his prophet,
had assured him of ; and which every hour's advancement towards recovery
of his health would confirm. It is the latest miraculous occurrence which
the writer records, and it belongs to a time at least a hundred and fifty years
before the probable time of the composition of his history. — "Hezekiah
 showed them all the house of his precious things, the silver, and
the gold," &c. (13) ; but whence had these treasures come, so soon after
the complete spoliation by Sennacherib (comp. xviii. 15), which had taken
place at farthest within a year (comp. xviii. 2, 13, xx. 6) 1

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 137
over, Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till
he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another."
Such impiety and tyranny provoked the Divine dis
pleasure, " and the Lord spake by his servants the
prophets," solemnly denouncing the national ruin
which was before long to ensue. Manasseh died after
a reign of fifty-five years, and was succeeded by his
son Amon, who was assassinated, after two years of
similar bad government, in the twenty-fifth year of his
age. The conspirators were overpowered by " the peo
ple of the land," who placed upon the throne his son,
the good Josiah, then only eight years of age.*
Josiah's reign, which lasted thirty-one years, was
the period of a thorough religious and civil reform.
His early course was dictated by his devout and up
right character ; " he did that which was right in the
sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of Da
vid his father, and turned not aside to the right hand
or to the left." But an incident which occurred in the
.eighteenth year of his reign gave a new impulse to
his religious and patriotic zeal. An officer sent by
him to the high-priest to make some arrangements re
specting the contributions which had been presented
by the people for the repairs of the temple, returned
with intelligence that the pontiff had " found the book
of the law in the house of the Lord," and laid the
holy volume, having himself first examined it, before
the prince. Josiah, on hearing it read, rent his clothes
in an agony of distress for the guilt which his people
and their ancestors had incurred by their neglect of
* 2 Kings xxi. 1-26. — " In the house of which the Lord said to Da
vid, and to Solomon, his son," &c. (7) ; comp. 2 Sam. vii. 10 ; 1 Kings ix.
3. — " The remnant of mine inheritance " (14) ; that is, the kingdom of Ju
dah, which had survived the destruction of that of Israel. — " Manasseh
 was buried  in the garden of Uzza" (18) ; a place of
which we know nothing else.
12*

138 2 KINGS XIV. 1. —XXV. 30.' [LECT.
its precepts. He summoned his principal courtiers,
and sent them to learn the will of Jehovah of a proph
etess, the wife of the keeper of his wardrobe. She
bade them tell their master that all the penalties de
nounced in the Law should assuredly be visited upon
the sinful people, but that the religious monarch, in
consideration of the penitent humiliation which he
had evinced, should be spared the grief of seeing the
ruin of his nation, and should be gathered unto his
grave in peace.*
* 2 Kings xxii. 1-20. — " Go up to Hilkiah the high-priest, that he may
sum the silver," &c. (4) ; comp. xii. 4, 5. — " There was no reckoning
made with them of the money," &c. (7) ; comp. xii. 15. — " And Hilkiah
the high-priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, ' I have found the book of the
Law in the house of the Lord ' " (8). From the narrative which begins in
this place, it appears that, in consequence of reading in a copy of the Pen
tateuch alleged to have been found by the high-priest in the Temple, Josiah
was thrown into extreme alarm for the retributions denounced by it against
the apostasies of which he knew his people to have been guilty, and was ex
cited to the most vigorous perseverance in the work of reform already under
taken. From this statement some writers have been inclined to draw the in
ference, that Josiah, up to this time, was unacquainted with the Law, and
that, further, his ignorance of it implies a similar ignorance on the part of
the people at large ; facts which, it is pretended, justify the suspicion that the
Law hitherto had not been extant, and that it was now introduced by a
fraud. But this objection to the evidence of the authenticity of the Penta
teuch is weak at every point. 1. Even if Josiah had never seen a book of the
Law, this by no means proves an unacquaintance with it on the part of
others of the nation. In an age before the art of printing was known, of
course copies were comparatively rare ; but it might well be that they were
in use with the priests and others of the nation, while the young monarch,
busy with the duties, the ceremonies, and the pleasures of his high place, had
only become acquainted with such portions as his courtiers had seen fit to put
in his way, or had even conducted his reforms agreeably to the oral informa
tion and instructions of the priesthood , the authorized teachers of the national
religion. It would be quite extravagant to suppose that the law in Deut.
xvii. 18 would be always strictly complied with. 2. It by no means appears
from the narrative that the copy of the Law produced by Hilkiah was the first
copy which Josiah had seen. No such thing is asserted, nor is the suppo
sition necessary to account for the related facts. His agitation , and consequent
energetic measures, are equally well explained on other grounds. What
alarmed him so exceedingly appears to have been the passage of dreadful de
nunciation in Deuteronomy (xxviii. 15-68), or the corresponding one in

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 139
The sincerity of Josiah's patriotic solicitude was
manifested in immediate and decisive measures of re
form. He convoked all the elders of the people at
the temple, " and all the men of Judah and all the
inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests,
and the prophets, and all the people, both small and
great; and he read in their ears all the words of
the book of the covenant which was found in the
house of the Lord." For himself and for his people
Leviticus (xxvi. 14-39); and it may well have been that, though ac
quainted with the Law before, the examination of the copy sent by Hilkiah
first presented these particular passages to his notice. In that case, or even
if he did not now read them for the first time, the impression they would
make would be the greater in consequence of the peculiar character of the
volume now in his hands. The fact that it was one anciently consecrated to
the sacred use of the temple, and now providentially recovered from the dust
and obscurity of years, would speak powerfully to his imagination, as if it
were God himself addressing him from its pages. And especially would this
be the case, if, according to a supposition to which the circumstances related
give a high degree of probability, it was the autograph of Moses, originally
deposited " in the side of the ark of the covenant " (Deut. xxxi. 26), and
afterwards lost sight of by the carelessness of its keepers, that was now hap
pily recovered, and placed in the monarch's hands. No matter how familiar
he had been with every part of its contents before, the fact that he was now
reading the ipsissima verba, the very characters traced in the wilderness by
the hand of the lawgiver, would abundantly explain what is related of his
emotion and of his subsequent measures. 3. It is quite supposable that this
parade of finding in the temple the autograph of Moses, or the authorized copy
of it for the temple use (when in fact it had never been lost), was only a trick
of state on the part of Josiah or of Hilkiah, devised for the purpose of enforcing
the acquiescence of the people in their projects of reform. 4. The whole ac
count is, after all, a suspicious one. The history of the reign of Josiah, who,
for instance, is represented (xxiii. 15) as exercising some of the most violent
rights of sovereignty within the limits of a foreign government, is one of
the most questionable parts of the Books of Kings. It would be altogether
unsafe to assume, upon its testimony, that such a finding of the Law as it
relates either actually took place, or was pretended at the time to have taken
place. Infidelity is altogether too credulous, as usual, when it takes up with
such authority for materials to confute the genuine sacred history. 5. Let
the reader look back to the argument in the fourth of these Lectures (Vol.
I. pp. 67 et seq.) , and say whether the facts and considerations there present
ed will allow him to suppose that the Pentateuch was unknown to the peo
ple and kings of Israel down to Josiah's time.

140 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.
he solemnly renewed the ancient covenant,* " to walk
after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and
his testimonies, and his statutes, with all their heart,
and all their soul." He ordered the vessels which had
been used in idolatrous worship to be removed from
the temple and burned, and their ashes to be carried
to Bethel. He deprived and degraded the idolatrous
priests. He carried a grove out of the temple, and
having burned and ground it to atoms, desecrated its
dust by sprinkling it upon graves. He levelled with
the ground the dwellings of certain sodomites, and
" the high places of the gates that were in the enter
ing in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city."
He defiled Topheth, under the city walls, where chil
dren had been made " to pass through the fire to
Molech," " and the high places where the priests had
burnt incense, from Geba to Beersheba," and " the
high places that were before Jerusalem,  which
Solomon* the king of Israel had builded for Ashto-
reth," and other obscene deities of the land. " He took
away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to
the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord,
 and burnt the chariots of the sun with fire,
and the altars that were on the top of the upper cham
ber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made,
and the altars which Manasseh had made in the
two courts of the house of the Lord, did the king
beat down, and brake them down from thence, and
cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron." " And
he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the
groves, and filled their places with the bones of men ;
moreover, the altar that was at Bethel, and the high
place which Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made
Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high
* Ex. xix. 5-9.

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 141
place he brake down, and burnt the high place, and
stamped it small to powder, and burnt the grove."
Being led to ask a question respecting one of the
sepulchres from which he was taking bones in order
to pollute with their ashes the idolatrous altar, and
receiving for answer that it was the sepulchre of a
man of God from Judah who had predicted the trans
actions in which he was now engaged, "he said,
'  let no man move his bones ' ; so they let
his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that
came out of Samaria."
The work of purification accomplished in the north
ern kingdom, " the houses also of the high places that
were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel
had made to provoke the Lord to anger," being dis
posed of " according to all the acts that he had done
in Bethel," " the priests of the high places that were
there upon the altars " having been put to death, and
the altars defiled by the burning of human bones upon
them, Josiah returned to his capital, and made procla
mation of a solemn passover. All the people joyfully
assembled at his call, and " surely there was not holden
such a passover from the days of the judges that judged
Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor
of the kings of Judah." " Moreover, the workers with
familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and
the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in
the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put
away, that he might perform the words of the law>
which were written in the book that Hilkiah the
priest found in the house of the Lord."
But, though "like unto him was there no king
before him, that turned to the Lord with all his
heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might,
according to all the law of Moses," still " the Lord

142 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.
turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath,
wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah,
because of all the provocations that Manasseh had
provoked him withal ; and the Lord said, ' I will
remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have re
moved Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem,
which I have chosen, and the house of which I said,
My name shall be there.'" Accordingly, contrary
to the promise of Huldah, the last days of Josiah
were calamitous, and his death violent. The king
of Egypt, on an expedition against Assyria, marched
his troops into the Jewish territory. Josiah undertook
to obstruct his progress, and was slain in a great bat
tle fought at Megiddo. His attendants buried him at
Jerusalem, and his unworthy son Jehoahaz, then twen
ty-three years of age, succeeded to the government.
He reigned but three months. The conquering
forces of Egypt overran the country ; a heavy tribute
was imposed; his brother Eliakim, whose name was
changed to Jehoiakim, was raised to the throne, and
Jehoahaz died a captive exile in Egypt. To meet the
extortions of his Egyptian master, Jehoiakim was com
pelled to vex his subjects by oppressive taxation. His
evil reign lasted eleven years, till he was thirty-six
years of age.*
* 2 Kings xxiii. 1-37. — "The priests of the high places  did
eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren " (9) ; that is, with all
his zeal against idolatry, evinced by sanguinary executions (20), he suffered
the idolatrous priests, who had been the great perverters of the people, to
retain their share of the sacerdotal revenues (comp. Lev. ii. 1 - 10) . — " The
Mount of Corruption" (13; comp. 1 Kings xi. 7). Probably this should
be rendered " the Mount of Olives " ; ;vn(S>p, from nwp, rather than from
firsty. — " The altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam,
the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made," &c. (15 ; comp. 19,
20). How came Josiah to be carrying matters with so high a hand at
Bethel and other Samaritan cities ? They had never, since the separation
of the monarchies, belonged to the Jewish kings, and Samaria was now a

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 143
The tide of war now turned in favor of the new
kingdom of Babylon, which, under its able monarch,
Nebuchadnezzar, was aspiring to universal dominion.*
To him Jehoiakim became tributary for three years ;
province of Assyria, a power which would hardly permit such freedoms to
be taken with its subjects. — " According to the word of the Lord, which
the man of God proclaimed," &c. (16) ; comp. 1 Kings xiii., et seq. — " He
said, ' What title is that that I see? ' " (17). Rather, " What column? "
— " Surely there was not holden such a passover, from the days of the
judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of
the kings of Judah " (22). ( " Such a passover " ; that is, so magnificent,
or, by reason of the circumstances, so important, so memorable, so joyful.
Nothing can be more idle than to argue from this expression, that no passo
ver whatever had been kept since the days of the Judges. As well
might one infer from 1 Chron. xxix. 25, that the historian meant to de
clare Solomon to have been the first Jewish king ; comp. 2 Chron. xxx. 15.
— " Like unto him was there no king before him,  neither after
him arose there any like him " (25) ; but precisely the same thing had been
said of Hezekiah ; comp. 2 Kings xviii. 5. Of course both statements could
not be literally true. — " Pharaoh-nechoh, king of Egypt, went up against
the king of Assyria " (29). This prince seems to be well identified as the
Necho II. of profane history, sixth king of the twenty-sixth dynasty, son
and successor of Psammeticus. Herodotus says (Lib. II. §§ 158, 159) that
Necho invaded Judea ; and there is an apparent correspondence between
that historian's account of a battle of his with the Syrians at Magdolum,
and the narrative before us of Pharaoh-nechoh's victory over the Jews at
Megiddo. Herodotus also says that Nechoh took the Syrian city Cadytis,
by which he may have meant Jerusalem, so called as the holy city, riBM'lB ;
a name given to it on ancient coins. (See Walton's Polyglott, Vol. I. p. 37.)
— " King Josiah went against him, and he slew him at Megiddo " (ibid.) ;
the only city in Palestine known to us by this name (comp. Josh. xvii. 11 ;
Judges i. 27) appears to have been far out of the route from Egypt to the
Euphrates ; it was in the plain of Esdraelon, not only beyond the confines
of Josiah's dominions, but some miles northwest of Samaria, the ancient
capital of the sister kingdom. — " Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old
when he began to reign " (31) ; he was not, then, Josiah's oldest son ; comp.
36. — " Pharaoh-nechoh put him in bands at Riblah, in the land of Ha
math " (33) ; Hamath was at the northern extremity of Canaan (comp.
Numb. xiii. 21 ; Josh. xiii. 5 ; Judges iii. 3) ; Riblah is mentioned, as in
the same district, in Numb, xxxiv. 11.
* After a subjection of fifty years or more to Assyria, to which it was sub
jected by Esarhaddon, Babylon appears to have become independent by a
successful revolt of Nabopolassar, a prince of the Chaldee race, who thus,
about the year 625 B. C, became the founder of one of the great empires of
antiquity. Nebuchadnezzar was his son.

144 2 KINGS XIV. 1. — XXV. 30. [LECT.
at the end of which time, attempting a revolt, his lit
tle remaining power was crushed by Nebuchadnezzar,
and his Syrian, Moabitish, and Ammonitish allies ; a
retribution due to the sins of his great-grandfather,
Manasseh, " which the Lord would not pardon." Jehoi
akim " slept with his fathers," and was succeeded by
his son Jehoiachin, then eighteen years old, whose evil
reign lasted only three months. The power of Egypt,
the ally whose protection had already proved so in
sufficient, was now entirely broken, and Judea lay
at the mercy of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar having
sat down before the capital, Jehoiachin went out and
surrendered himself a prisoner, with his mother and
his principal courtiers, who, with the monarch's wives,
were carried away " into captivity from Jerusalem to
Babylon." The Babylonian stripped the temple and
the royal palace of their treasures ; he " cut in pieces
all the vessels of gold which Solomon, king of Israel,
had made " ; " and he carried away all Jerusalem,
and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor,
even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and
smiths ; none remained, save the poorest sort of the
people of the land ;  and all the men of might,
even seven thousand, and craftsmen and smiths a
thousand, all that were strong and apt for war, even
them the king of Babylon brought captive to Baby
lon." Mattaniah, the king's uncle, then twenty-one
years of age, was placed by the conqueror upon the
vacant throne, his name being changed to Zedekiah.
The length of his reign was the same as that of Je
hoiachin, and resembled it equally in its vicious and
turbulent character.*
* 2 Kings xxiv. 1-20. — "In the eighth year of his reign " (12) ; that
is, of Nebuchadnezzar's reign ; if the writer meant Jehoiachin's, he contra
dicted his previous statement (comp. 8). — " As the Lord had said " (13) ;
comp. xx. 17.

XLII.] DECLINE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOMS. 145
Towards the close of the ninth year of Zedekiah's
reign, Nebuchadnezzar undertook effectually to repress
his mutinous movements, and laid formal siege to his
capital, which, after a year and some months, he re
duced by famine. The king, attempting to escape
by night with a portion of his forces, was pursued,
and overtaken not far from the city ; his guard were
routed, and he was carried a prisoner to Riblah. By
the command of Nebuchadnezzar, his sons were put
to death before his eyes ; his eyes were then put out ;
and he was conveyed in chains to Babylon.
The victor proceeded to wreak his wrath upon the
city. Nebuzar-adan, one of his generals, was sent to
execute his vindictive will. " He burnt the house of
the Lord, and the king's house, and all the houses
of Jerusalem, and every great man's house burnt he
with fire ; and all the army of the Chaldees, that were
with the captain of the guard, brake down the walls
of Jerusalem round about." " The rest of the people
that were left in the city " he now transported to
Babylon, leaving only " of the poor of the land to be
vinedressers and husbandmen." The remaining val
uable vessels and other objects of art in the Temple
he also swept away, the more precious of them entire,
the rest in fragments. The chief-priest, with the
second in rank, and seventy or eighty other persons
of principal distinction in civil and military office, he
brought before his sovereign at Riblah, by whose
command they were immediately slain. Over " the
people that remained in the land of Judah," one Ge-
daliah was made viceroy. His attempts to secure
quiet by conciliation and lenity were unsuccessful ;
and he was put to death after seven months by a
small band of conspirators. To escape the too proba
ble consequences of this rash proceeding, " all the
VOL. III. 13

146 2 KINGS XIV. 1. —XXV. 30. [LECT.
people, both small and great, and the captains of the
armies, arose, and came to Egypt ; for they were afraid
of the Chaldees." And thus the dispersion of the
Israelites from their ancient seats was complete.
With the son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar,
Jehoiachin, the deposed and exiled king of Judah,
found favor and a mitigation of his captivity, which
had now lasted thirty-seven years. " Evil-merodach,
king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign,
did lift up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out
of prison; and he spake kindly to him, and set his
throne above the throne of the kings that were with
him in Babylon, and changed his prison garments ;
and he did eat bread continually before him all the
days of his life. And his allowance was a continual
allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for
every day, all the days of his life." *
* 2 Kings xxv. 1 -30. — " On the ninth day of the fourth month," &c.
(3) ; the word fourth, wanting in the Hebrew, is supplied by our translators
from Jer. xxxix. 2, Iii. 6. — " The height of the chapiter three cubits " (17) ;
according to 1 Kings vii. 16, it was five cubits. — " When all the captains
of the armies, they and their men, heard," &c. (23 ; comp. 26) ; who were
these captains that were left after the transactions related in 11, 12? —
" Evil-merodaeh, king of Babylon" (27) ; Evil-merodach, the Ilvaroda-
mus of profane history, was son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar ; comp.
p. 149.

XLIII.] HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY. 147

LECTURE XLIII.
HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO THE AC
CESSION OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES.
B. C. 588-175.
Sources of Information. — Kings of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-
Merodach, Neriglissor, Laborasoarchad, Belshazzar. — Condi
tion of the Jews under these Monarchs. — Kings of Mediaj
Arbaces, Cyaxares, Astyages, Darius. — Conquest of Babylon
by Cyrus. — Kings of Persia, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius Hys-
taspis, Xerxes I., Artaxerxes Longimanbs, Xerxes II. , Sogdi-
anus, Darius Nothus, Artaxerxes Mnemon, Ochus, Darius Co-
domanus. — Condition of the Jews under the Persian Rule. —
Greek Conquests. — Victories of Alexander at the Granicus
and at Issus. — Conquests of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Persia,
and Babylon. — Death of Alexander at Babylon. — Partition
of his Empire. — Relations of the Jews to the Governments
of Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. — Their His
tory BETWEEN THE AGE OF ALEXANDER AND THAT OF ANTIOCHUS
Epiphanes arranged under three unequal Periods. — Succession
of Greek-Egyptian and Greek-Syrian Kings. — Succession of Jew
ish High-Priests. — Earliest Relations of the Jews to Rome. —
Accession of Antiochus.
In order to a correct understanding of the later books
of the Old Testament, it is important to have some
clear view of the relations of the Jews to other nations
after the loss of their own political independence. To
this end it is necessary to become acquainted with
leading events in the history of the great empires of
the world, as this history is recorded by the profane
writers. The Jew Josephus, in his " Jewish Antiqui
ties " and " Wars of the Jews," is one of the principal
authorities relied on by moderns who have treated of
the subject. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Di-

148 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
odorus Siculus, Hecatseus of Miletus, contemporary
with Darius Hystaspis * and Ctesias, of the age of
Artaxerxes Mnemon, of whose treatise only some
fragments remain, convey more or less information
concerning the ancient empires which have left no
literature of their own. Strabo, Cornelius Nepos,
Quintus Curtius, Livy, Plutarch, Aulus Gellius, Pau-
sanias, Arrian, Appian, Justin, Athena^us, Polybius,
JElian, Eusebius, and other writers, Pagan and Chris
tian, furnish materials relating to the periods of Greek
and Roman dominion.
The destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem
by an order from' Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, to
his general, Nebuzar-adan, took place in the year 588
before the Christian era, according to the vulgar reck
oning of that epoch ; which date corresponds with
the year 387 from the revolt, or the separate existence
of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, with the fourth
year of the forty-seventh Olympiad, and with the year
162 from the foundation of Rome.
It will aid a recollection of the succession of events,
to bear in mind the general statement, that, within
the period now under notice, the Jews at first were
successively the subjects of the three great empires of
antiquity antecedent to the Roman, namely, the Chal-
dsean, Persian, and Greek ; and that afterwards, when
the latter empire was dismembered, they were, for the
most part, under the dominion, now of the Greek-
Egyptian, and now of the Greek-Syrian monarchs, ac
cording as the changing fortune of long wars threw
them into one or the other scale.
Five monarchs occupied the Chaldsean throne f
* Or, to speak more precisely, the work attributed to him, of which por
tions are preserved.
f See above, pp. 72, 143.

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 149
during the period of the subjection of the Jewish race
to that empire ; of whom, however, only the first and
last reigned for a considerable time. Nebuchadnezzar,
called by the Greeks Nebuchodonosor, reigned no less
than forty-three years, twenty-six of which followed
the destruction of Jerusalem. According to the cur
rent estimation of greatness, he was unquestionably
one of the very great men of antiquity. His age lies
sufficiently within the range of authentic history to
prevent any doubt from resting on that question, after
all allowance has been made for traditionary embel
lishments. From the condition of a small principal
ity, lately emerged from that of a tributary province,
he not only raised Babylon to be the mistress of a
large portion of the Eastern continent, but pushed his
victorious arms into Africa, humbling the rival power
of Egypt; and even, according. to credible accounts,
penetrated to the Pillars of Hercules, at the extreme
West, and back again through Spain to Thrace. In
his old age he employed the vast wealth amassed in
his military expeditions in erecting those temples,
gardens, and other splendid monuments in and about
his capital city, which made Babylon in after times
one of the wonders of the world.
His son Ilvarodamus, or Evil-merodach, as Scrip
ture calls him, after reigning but two years, was as
sassinated by his brother-in-law, Neriglissor, who is
not named in Scripture, unless, as has been conjec
tured, he is the same with the courtier of Nebuchad
nezzar, called Nergal-sharezer by Jeremiah.* He fell
in battle with the Medes, after a reign of four years.
His son and successor, Laborasoarchad, surviving him
but a few months, was himself succeeded by Nabonned,
the Belshazzar, or Balthasar, of the Book of Daniel.
* Jer. xxxix. 3.
13*

150 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
He is believed to have been a conspirator and usurper,
but of the royal blood. He reigned seventeen years,
being slain at the taking of Babylon by Cyrus, in the
year 540 B. C, as is expressly stated by Xenophon in
the Cyropsedia, as well as in the Book of Daniel.
Xenophon says that he was an impious prince ; * and
from the account which Herodotus gives of the meas
ures taken for the defence of the city by his mother
Nitocris, he appears to have been but a cipher in the
government, j"
Of the condition of the Jews in the Babylonish ter
ritory, after their transportation, down to the close of
the period which has been now surveyed, we have no
important information from profane sources, addi
tional to that which is occasionally presented in the
prophetic and other books of the nation themselves, and
which will come before us in its place, in the examina
tion of those books. The river Chebar, or Chaboras,
to which $ it would appear that the first company of
captives, consisting of about twenty thousand persons,
was conveyed, was a branch of the Euphrates, empty
ing into it on the eastern side in latitude 34° ; and in
Mesopotamia, on the banks of this river, it is probable
that the chief colony of Jews employed themselves in
agricultural occupations. Their king, meanwhile,
during the last part of his life, was in honorable im
prisonment at the capital city, through the favor of
Evil-merodach, son of his conqueror. § Of the his
tory of Shealtiel, Jehoiachin's son and heir, we read
nothing, except that he was father of Zerubbabel, ||
who is to appear before us hereafter in the character
of restorer of the Jewish commonwealth.
* Cyropsedia, Lib. VII. cap. 5, § 32.
f Herod., Lib. I. capp. 185, 186.
X Comp. 2 Kings xxiv. 12 - 16 with Ezek. i. 1-3.
$ 2 Kings xxv. 28, 29. || Ezra iii. 2.

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 151
The period in history at which we have arrived
brings to our notice the two great kingdoms of Me
dia * and Persia, whose affairs now first connect them
selves with those of the Jews. They lay at the east
of Babylon and Assyria, the former to the north,
the latter to the south, between the Persian Gulf and
the Caspian Sea. The first king of Media mentioned
in history is Arbaces, who is related to have over
thrown the ancient empire of Babylon, then under the
rule of Sardanapalus.f In the year 623 B. C, its ar
my, allied with that of Babylon, made the conquest of
modern Assyria, then under the sway of Saracusl and
sacked its famous capital, Nineveh. The Median king
at this time was Cyaxares the First, with whom it is
commonly believed that Zoroaster was contemporary. J
Astyages, his son and successor, was father of Cyax
ares the Second, called in Daniel, Darius the Mede,
who succeeded him on the throne, and of Mandane,
who, marrying Cambyses, king of Persia, according to
Xenophon, or a noble of that country, according
to Herodotus, gave birth to Cyrus the Great. The
capital city of Media was Ecbatana.
Persia, otherwise called Elam, after the second son
of Shem, as has been supposed, appears no otherwise,
in the most ancient history, than as Chedorlaomer,
king of Elam, is mentioned § as one of the alliance
which disturbed the neighbours of Lot. In the reign
of Neriglissor, king of Babylon, in the progress of a
war between him and Cyaxares the Second, the Median

* See above, p. 72.
f See above, pp. 71, 72.
X According to others, he lived in the reign of Darius Hystaspis. See
"L'Art de Verifier les Dates," Tome II. p. 386. Comp. Lavoigne's
" Atlas," No. 10.
§ Gen. xiv. 1. ,

152 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
monarch, a Persian army of thirty thousand men being
sent under Cyrus to the assistance of the latter, the
Median forces also were placed under his command.
Neriglissor had allied himself with Croesus, king of
Lydia, in Asia Minor, so famous for his wealth. Bend
ing his forces against those of this prince, Cyrus de
feated and took him prisoner, in the decisive battle of
Thymbra, a plain not far from Sardes, his capital.
Having then easily overrun and reduced the country
between the Greek Archipelago and the Euphrates,
he laid siege to the Chaldean capital, which after two
years he took by storm, his soldiers entering it on the
night of a banquet within the walls, through the bed
of the Euphrates, on both banks of which it had been
built, and the waters of which Cyrus had caused to
be turned into a canal, which, with vast labor, had
been excavated for that purpose.
So fell the great empire of Babylon, in the year
539 B. C, having stood, since its foundation by Nabo-
polassar, eighty years. Cyaxares, who lived two years
longer, was succeeded in his now wide dominions by
Cyrus, who had married his only daughter ; and hence
forward, from Cyrus's origin, the dynasty is called that
of the Persian kings.
Their number, including Cyrus, was thirteen. He
reigned seven years, and, according to Xenophon,
added Egypt to his dominions before his death, a
conquest, however, which other authorities ascribe to
the following reign. His son Cambyses reigned seven
years and a half. He was a prince of brutal charac
ter, having fallen, in public and private life, into ex
cesses for which an imputed insanity affords the best
excuse. Though possessing some of the military vir
tues, his expeditions in Africa into the regions west
and south of Egypt were disastrous. Returning from

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 153
the last of them, he learned that his throne had been
usurped by an impostor, under the name of Smerdis,
a brother of Cambyses, whom that prince, apprehend
ing such a design on his part, had previously caused
to be put to death. On his way to suppress the con
spiracy,, he received, while mounting his horse, a mor
tal wound from his own sword.
The pseudo-Smerdis reigned but a few months.
Seven Persian nobles conspired to put him to death,
a daughter of Otanes, one of them, having, under his
direction, discovered, while the king was asleep, that
he had lost his ears, and was therefore a Magus, the
whole order having lately suffered that mutilation by
royal command. They agreed together on the kind
of lot which was to determine the succession to one
of them ; and the artifice of the groom of Darius
Hystaspis, who caused his master's horse to neigh
first on the rising of the sun, the Persian divinity,*
makes one of the most familiar anecdotes in ancient
history. His character, according to the best ac
counts, did no discredit to his elevation. He strength
ened his connections with the family of Cyrus, to
which it is believed that he was allied by birth, by
marrying three princesses of the royal blood. He di
vided his empire into twenty governments, and made
other arrangements for the collection of his revenues,
keeping his court, as his predecessors had done, alter
nately at Babylon, Susa or Shushan, the Persian, and
Ecbatana, the Median capital. In consequence of a
mutiny at Babylon, which he had found it hard to
quell, he is said to have thrown down, two hundred feet
from the height of its walls, leaving them still fifty feet
high. In the course of his foreign wars, which were
* Herod., Lib. III. capp. 85, 86.

154 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
prosecuted with various success, he pushed his western
conquests into the Greek continent and islands. Los
ing the battle of Marathon, fought by his generals, Da-
tis and Artaphernes, against Miltiades, in the thirty-
first year of his reign, and being presently after embar
rassed in his preparations for another expedition by
a revolt in Egypt, he was unable to do any thing im
portant towards retrieving his affairs in the west. His
death occurred five years after; namely, in the year
485 B. C.
His successor was his son, the despicable Xerxes
the First. After reducing the Egyptians, and forming
an alliance with the Carthaginian Hamilcar, who, it
was arranged between them, should at the same time
invade the Greek colonies in Sicily and the Italian con
tinent, he, in the fifth year of his reign, led his army
of over two millions of men to the conquest of the
little Greek republics. His passage over the Helle
spont and through Mount Athos for this purpose, his
check at Thermopylae and disaster at Eubcea, his cap
ture of the empty city of Athens, his defeat at Sala
mis, and disgraceful flight back to Asia Minor, and
the conclusive overthrow of his general, Mardonius,
at Platsea, by Pausanias, the Spartan, and Aristides,
are matter of the most familiar history. After this
last battle (in 479 B. C), Xerxes never prosecuted
the "war with any spirit, but gave himself up whol
ly to licentious pleasures. He was murdered in his
bed fifteen years after by the captain of his life
guard. Artaxerxes, surnamed Longimanus, ascended his
father's vacant throne, and reigned the long term of
more than forty years. He made a successful ex
pedition, early in his reign, against the revolted Egyp
tians, but the fortune of Greece was still in the as-

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 155
cendant, and his fleets and armies were defeated by
Cimon at the island of Cyprus, and on the mainland
of Asia Minor. At length, in the sixteenth year of
his reign, a war of fifty years' continuance with the
Greeks was concluded, on terms the most honorable
to that people, and the most unsatisfactory to their
enemies, the treaty acknowledging the independence
of the former, and restricting the Persians from ap
proaching the vEgean Gulf by sea or land; The char
acter of Artaxerxes is favorably represented by the
Greek historians.
I have been the more minute respecting the suc
cession of Persian monarchs thus far, because ques
tions concerning the.date of events recorded in canon
ical books of the Old Testament connect themselves
with the history of their reigns.
The successor and only legitimate son of the last-
named king, Xerxes the Second, was assassinated be
fore the end of two months, by Sogdianus, a natural
brother, who, in his turn, in the course of six months,
met the same fate at the hand of Ochus, also a son of
Artaxerxes. Ochus, called by the Greeks Darius No-
thus, reigned nineteen years, and in his time the un
stable pillars of the empire began sensibly to give way.
Lydia revolted, and was with difficulty quelled. Egypt
recovered its independence, and discontents arose in
Media. On the other hand, taking advantage of the
Peloponnesian war, the Persians, following the advice
of Alcibiades, who had come a fugitive among them,
regained possession of some of the Greek islands.
Artaxerxes, surnamed Mnemon, from his remarkable
memory, succeeded his father, and reigned forty-six
years, longer than any other Persian monarch. His
brother Cyrus, governor of Asia Minor, making war
upon him with the aid of thirteen thousand Greek

156 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
auxiliaries, was defeated in a decisive battle at the
village of Cunaxa, thirty miles south of Babylon ; and
this was the occasion of the famous retreat of the ten
thousand through eighteen hundred miles of hostile
territory under their historian, as well as commander,
Xenophon. In the sequel, in consequence of the in
ternal feuds of Greece, Artaxerxes did much towards
retrieving the before ruined fortunes of Persia in that
quarter. In Egypt, notwithstanding great prepara
tions, he met only with reverses. He has come down
to the knowledge of posterity with the reputation,
on the whole, of a wise and generous prince.
The great event of the next reign, that of Ochus,
son of the last monarch, which lasted twenty-one years,
was the recovery of Egypt, which from that time to
the present age has always been under foreign rule.
Ochus was poisoned by Bagoas, an Egyptian eunuch,
who first promoted Arses, the king's son, to the throne,
and then, at the end of two years, put him also to
death, having previously destroyed all of his father's
race. Darius Codomanus succeeded, a descendant of
Darius Nothus, and the last in the renowned line of
Persian kings.
The condition of the Jews under the first nine
princes of this dynasty, down to Darius Nothus, we
shall have occasion to see in our examination of the
last three historical books of the Jewish canon. Un
der Artaxerxes Mnemon, in the expeditions against
Egypt and Asia Minor, their country was often the
seat of war. Their high-priest Joiada,* dying in
this reign, was succeeded by his son Jonathan, who
murdered in the temple his brother Jesus, on account
of his having aspired, with the countenance of Bagoses,
* See Nehemiah xii. 1 1 .

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 157
the Persian governor, to supplant him in the priest
hood. Bagoses, in punishment of this crime, imposed
a duty of fifty drachmas on every animal sacrificed at
the temple, the first tax, as far as we know, levied by
the Persians in the province. Jonathan died in the
nineteenth year of Ochus, and was succeeded in the
priesthood by his son Jaddua.
Darius Codomanus ascended the Persian throne in
the year 335 B. C. The same or the previous year
died Philip of Macedon, after consolidating the Greek
power under his sceptre. The ascendency of Athens,
established by Pericles on the ruins of the Persian pow
er in Greece, had been lost in the Peloponnesian war ;
and the sovereignty of Sparta, succeeding, had con
tinued but about half as long. The battle of Leuctra
had given the' place of precedency to Thebes in the
person of Epaminondas, as long as that great man
lived. But fatal distractions had followed his death,
and twenty-five years after, all Greece, enfeebled by
internal struggles, fell an easy victim, on the field of
Cheronsea, to the mercenary levies of the new Mace
donian power.
Probably it was as much with a view to establish
his throne by the acquisition of popularity at home,
as to spread his possessions and fame in foreign re
gions, that Philip projected the expedition into Per
sia, designed, as he professed, to punish the insults
offered in past times by that nation to the Grecian
gods. He was assassinated in the midst of his prep
arations, and left the prosecution of the enterprise to
his greater son, then twenty years of age.
It was in the second year after his own accession
and that of Darius, that Alexander led an army of
thirty or forty thousand Greeks across the Hellespont
into Asia Minor. Almost unprovided with money
VOL. III. 14 *

158 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
as he was, the Persian treasury at Sardes in Lydia was
an important object, and the issue of the battle of the
Granicus, so called from a little river flowing into the
Propontis in the northwestern corner of Asia Minor,
placed it in his hands. The campaign of the next
year put him in possession of the whole extent of that
peninsula, and the great victory at Issus, a little town
at its southeast corner, on the border of Syria, in
which he defeated an army of more than five hundred
thousand men commanded by Darius in person, leav
ing more than a hundred thousand dead on the field,
opened his way into the more central provinces of the
Persian empire.
Alexander moved south, along the eastern coast of
the Mediterranean, towards Egypt, occupied Damas
cus, Sidon, Tyre, and Gaza, and then proceeded towards
Jerusalem. The high-priest Jaddua met him at a lit
tle distance from the city, clad in his pontifical robes,
at the head of a procession of his priests, likewise in
their official vestments, and the citizens dressed in
white. All this, Josephus says, was arranged agree
ably to Divine directions, communicated to Jaddua in
a dream. As soon as they met, Alexander prostrat
ed himself before the name of Jehovah embroidered
on the high-priest's turban, and, when expostulated
with for the act by his general Parmenio, replied,
that it was not the man he reverenced, but the divini
ty whom he served ; for when yet in Macedonia, and
deliberating on his present expedition, he had seen in
a dream a man clothed in this same habit, who, bid
ding him make no delay, had assured him, in the name
of his God, of the conquest of Persia .* It is not ne
cessary, though it is not unnatural, to suppose collu-

Joseph., " Antiq. Jud.," Lib. XI. cap. 8, §§ 4, 5.

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 159
sion in this case between Alexander and the Jewish
priest. The former could not be blind to the im
portance of securing for himself a people, who, how
ever few and unwarlike, held the key of Persia on the
side of Egypt and Asia Minor ; and he was too well
versed in the arts of politics not to be willing to make
them his, if, cool friends as they were to his enemy, it
might be done at such easy cost as that of an Orien
tal prostration. He proceeded to fix the favorable
impression he had made, by attending the high-priest
respectfully to his temple, offering sacrifices there as
he directed, and then formally securing to the Jews
the administration of their own laws. The conse
quence was, that he recruited his army among them,
and, marching towards Egypt, left a friendly people in
his rear.
The conquest of Egypt was easy, for its people had
long had friendly relations with the Greeks, and were
exceedingly impatient of the Persian yoke. From
Memphis, its capital, Alexander made his pilgrimage
to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, to be recognized
as son of that deity, and returning, ordered to be built,
on the island Pharos, at the mouth of the Nile, the
great city which he called by his own name. In the
spring of the year 331 B. C, having recruited his army
in Palestine, he crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris,
and near the site of ancient Nineveh fought the battle
of Arbela, so called, though the city of that name is
some miles distant from the scene of action.* In it
Alexander defeated an army of more than a million
Persians, commanded by Darius, and put an end to the
existence of that empire. Darius made his escape in-
* By the coincidence of an eclipse, mentioned by Plutarch, it appears that
the battle was fought on the first day of October. Comp. Petav., " Urano-
logion," Diss., Lib. IV. cap. 7, p. 156.

160 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
to Media, and in the following spring was treacherous
ly murdered by two of his courtiers ; having all along
experienced fortunes ill corresponding to his deserts,
for, according to the standard of those times, all credible
accounts agree in representing him as entitled to be
called, what Dryden calls him, "Darius great and good."
Alexander advanced unopposed towards Babylon,
which surrendered to him without a blow ; and Susa,
Persepolis (which, at the instigation of Thais, his Athe
nian concubine, he fired), and finally Ecbatana, suc
cessively fell into his hands. Pushing his conquests
still further towards the east, and having arrived, say
some, at the banks of the Ganges, but at those of an
eastern branch of the Indus according to others, his
soldiers there, alarmed at the thought of the vast ex
tent of country which now lay between them and their
home, prevailed with him to desist and retrace* his
steps. He regained Babylon in the year 324, and in the
following spring, while engaged in restoring the ancient
magnificence of the city, and projecting new martial
operations, died there in consequence of a debauch,
or of poison, in his thirty-fourth year, having never
seen his native capital since the second of his reign.
The inheritance of his throne, at his death, nomi
nally fell, first to his brother Arida^us, surnamed
Philip, and then to a posthumous son, named Alex
ander iEgus, to both of whom Perdiccas, a favorite
general of Alexander, was appointed regent. But ac
tually it fell from the first — and soon avowedly, also,
after the murder of the two young princes — to some
twenty governors, who, by an arrangement under Per
diccas, divided the provinces between them, and were
not long in declaring or in making themselves inde
pendent of each other, and of the central Macedonian
authority.

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 161
If, within the limits which I must observe, it were
possible to follow, with any degree of lucid explana
tion, the revolutions which continued successively to
take place in this deranged state of the late Macedo
nian empire, till the hard chain of Roman servitude
united them all once more, it would still be, in great
part, deviation from our purpose, which is merely to
watch the external political relations, and so, as affect
ed by these, the internal condition, of the Jewish com
monwealth. It will be found, I believe, that these re
lations merely connected the Jews, to any important
extent, with the four governments in Macedonia, in
Asia Minor, in Syria, and in Egypt, and chiefly with
the last two, and very little, after a short time, with the
first. The second was very soon brought to a close, in
the manner to be forthwith related. Of the first, after
the speedy death of Alexander's son, sixteen kings, of
various races, are reckoned within the period in ques
tion ; of the third, seven kings ; and of the fourth, six.
Those of the two latter kingdoms we shall have oc
casion to specify, in some detail of their characters and
fortunes. To do this in respect to the others does not
fall within our scope, and it would be useless to burden
the memory or the page with a mere list of names.
For the sake of some arrangement to aid recollec-
tion, I shall divide the period between Alexander's
death and the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes (323 -
175 B. C.) into three unequal parts, the close of the
first two finding the Jews under the Greek-Egyptian,
and of the last under the Greek-Syrian sway. The
first will end with the foundation of the Syrian king
dom, in the year 301 B. C, and the second with the
nearly contemporaneous accessions of Seleucus Callin-
icus and Ptolemy Euergetes, in the year 245 B. C.
In the partition after Alexander's death, the vice-
14*

162 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
royalty of Macedonia fell to the share of his general
Antipater, Egypt to Ptolemy Lagus, part of Asia Mi
nor to Antigonus, and Syria, including Palestine, to
Laomedon. But Ptolemy * of Egypt, soon after, or
ganizing a rebellion against the regent Perdiccas, in
the progress of which that officer was slain, Ptolemy
profited by the disorder which followed, to add Judea,
including Samaria, to his government, and Laomedon
thenceforward disappears from the history. The Jews,
happy to be brought under the dominion of such a
prince, scarcely made any show of resistance. He
came in person to Jerusalem, according to Josephus,
and imitated his late master's example in presenting
an offering at the temple. Returning, he took with
him several thousand Jews, who afterwards were vol
untarily followed by numbers of their countrymen. A
portion were established in Alexandria, with all the
privileges of citizens ; others were enrolled in Ptolemy's
armies, and others favorably settled in his newly-ac
quired possession of Cyrene. j1
Antigonus, to whom a large portion of Asia Minor
had been allotted, had meanwhile been bringing sub
stantially the whole of that region under his sway.
By Antipater, governor of Macedon, and successor
of Perdiccas in the regency, he had been appointed
commander-in-chief of the troops of all the provinces
of Asia Minor, while Seleucus, general of all the cav
alry of the empire, a person who is presently to as
sume an important place in the history, received from
the same source the appointment of governor of Baby-
* Ptolemy was probably an illegitimate brother of Alexander. See
" L'Art de Vender," &c, Tom. II. p. 244.
f This was not the beginning of Jewish colonization in Egypt. It will
be remembered that there was a numerous emigration under Ishmael, at the
time of the Babylonish captivity; comp. 2 Kings xxv. 25, 26.

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 163
Ion. Antigonus and Seleucus, allied together, made
successful head against the forces of Polyperchon, An-
tipater's successor in the regency, and, their common
purpose answered, became themselves embroiled in
war. Seleucus was supported by Ptolemy, and, in the
contest between these parties which followed, Palestine
was overrun by the troops of Antigonus in the year
314, and the Egyptians were driven from Jerusalem.
The success of Antigonus, however, for the time being
was short-lived. Two years after, Seleucus defeated
his troops before Babylon, and took possession of
that city, thus establishing what is called the era of
the Seleucidae, or otherwise the era of contracts, con
tracts being accustomed afterwards in the East to re
fer to it till the Mohammedan calendar partly super
seded it, as ours do to the Christian era. As vic
tory inclined to one or the other side, Judea was suc
cessively the possession of Antigonus or of Ptolemy,
till, in consequence of a decisive victory over Antigo
nus in the year 301, obtained at Ipsus in Phrygia, in
which that prince was slain, and the power of his fami
ly irretrievably broken, it was confirmed to Egypt as
a province of that empire. Its sufferings while it was
the seat of war were partly compensated by the mild
government of Ptolemy, as long as it was under his
rule; and many of its inhabitants, to enjoy the bet
ter the benefits which this offered, continued to emi
grate, to join their brethren established in his realm.
With the battle of Ipsus, and the overthrow of An-
tigonus's power, ends our first division of the period
next following Alexander's death. The events thus
summarily related had occupied twenty-two years. In
the partition which followed that battle, and in which
the regal title was openly assumed by the parties, the
northern portions of the Greek-Asian empire, from

164 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
Ionia to India, fell to Seleucus (surnamed Nicator,
from his many victories), who thus established the
great modern Syrian kingdom, so called; while the
southern, from Libya to Arabia, including Coele-Syria
and Palestine, were given to the sway of the Ptole
mies. From this point we may limit our attention
to the history of the Greek-Syrian and the Greek-
Egyptian monarchs, the relations of the Jews to the
European divisions of the empire being so remote and
incidental as to demand no distinct consideration.
In the year 284 B. C. Ptolemy died, lamented by his
subjects as a wise, just, and valiant king, and by men
of learning as a friend to their pursuits, and as one of
their number. He had abdicated the throne a year be
fore, in favor of his son Philadelphus, and had enrolled
himself among the royal life-guards, the former prob
ably being in reality, and the latter designed to ap
pear, a measure of precaution against his elder son,
Ceraunus, whose competency to the government he
distrusted. Under his administration, the condition of
the Jews in Palestine was uniformly prosperous ; Se
leucus, too, by imitating his generous policy, had al
lured them to establish colonies in the many cities
which he built. Onias the First, their high-priest, who
had succeeded his father Jaddua, dying in the year
300 B. O, had been succeeded, in his turn, by his son,
Simon the Just, said in the Jewish records to have
been the last of the Great Synagogue; by which
phrase, rightly understood, is meant no more than a
succession of men from Ezra and Nehemiah down,
who interested themselves in the preservation of the
sacred books, and the restoration of the religious con
stitution and usages. Simon, who is believed to have
died in the year 292, was succeeded by his brother
Eleazar. Under his religious administration lived An-

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 165
tigonus Socho, president of the Sanhedrim, said in
Jewish tradition to have been the first considerable
collector of those older traditions which, afterwards
elaborated further, and enlarged by additions of later
times, have come down to us in the Talmuds.
By Ceraunus of Egypt, a fugitive from his brother's
court, Seleucus of Syria (the last survivor of Alexan
der's generals), who had received him to his confidence,
was assassinated four years after the accession of Phil-
adelphus. His successor was Antiochus, his son, sur-
named by his subjects Soter, from the check which
he put to ravages of Gauls in his dominions. After
a reign of twenty years, during which he had prose
cuted, at disadvantage, a skirmishing war with Egypt,
he was succeeded by his son, surnamed, in the wanton
ness of Eastern adulation, Theos ; a name which is now
to be seen on his coins. He, too, waged Unsuccess
ful war with Egypt from the fifth to the eleventh year
of his reign, which reign ended in the year 245. Dur
ing his time and that of his predecessor, correspond
ing with the later period of Ptolemy Philadelphus,
the Jews, still under the government of the latter, prof
ited by the unbroken tranquillity which they enjoyed,
in beginning to acquaint themselves with Greek liter
ature ; * and towards the end of this period lived that
* In his reign was probably made the Greek version of the Old Testa
ment, known by the names of the Alexandrine and the Septuagint, or rather
so much of it as includes the Pentateuch, the other books bearing marks of
later hands. The Jewish tradition reports, that Ptolemy, being advised by
Demetrius Phalereus, keeper of his library at Alexandria, to obtain a transla
tion of the Mosaic writings, applied to the elders at Jerusalem, who sent him
a Hebrew manuscript, and seventy-two learned Jews to do the work. (Jo
seph., "Antiq.," Lib. XII. cap. 2, §fy 1-6.) Aristeas, in his " History of
the Septuagint Translators," a work the authenticity of which was formerly
much discussed, relates (p. 331, et seq., edit. Van Dale) that they finished
their work in seventy-two days. According to another account, Ptolemy
shut up the seventy-two scholars, each in a separate cell ; each executed the

166 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
Zadok who is said to have founded the sect of the
Sadducees. For two years of the last of this time, half
of the revenues of Judea were enjoyed by the Syri
ans, being given to their king by Ptolemy as part of
the marriage portion of his daughter.
Our second period, consisting of fifty-six years, ends
with the nearly simultaneous accession, in the year
245 B. C, of Seleucus Callinicus, son of Antiochus
Theos, in Syria, and in Egypt, of the son of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, namely, Ptolemy surnamed Euergetes,
in commemoration of his having brought back from a
successful expedition to Babylon the Egyptian idols
transported thither by Cambyses.
During the first twenty-four years of the following
period, through the' reigns of one Egyptian monarch,
and two of Syria, namely, Seleucus Callinicus and his
son and successor, unfitly surnamed Ceraunus, a weak
prince, who was murdered after two years' reign, the
quiet of Judea was not disturbed, the Syrian empire
having suffered too much in the Egyptian wars to be
disposed so soon to renew them, and, besides, being dis
tracted by feuds in the royal family, and pressed by
other enemies. That pacific and paternal prince, Ptol
emy Euergetes, visited the Jews at the beginning of his
reign, and took means to conciliate a friendship on their
part, which he never gave them reason to withdraw.
At this time the high-priest was Onias the Second
(son of Simon the Just), who in the year 233 had suc
ceeded Manasseh, who had himself been raised to the
priesthood on the death of Eleazar, and had adminis
tered it twenty-seven years. The avarice of Onias the
Second was fruitful in mischief to his country. For

whole work ; and, on comparison, the seventy-two translations were found
to agree, without the minutest variation.

XLIII] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. . 167
several years after his accession, he withheld the
annual payment of twenty talents due to the Egyp
tian treasury. The government of Ptolemy having
sent a peremptory message to demand the arrears,
Joseph, the nephew of Onias, was despatched on an
embassy of submission and pacification. He had the
address to obtain from the king, on the stipulation of
a specified annual payment, the privilege of collecting
all his taxes in Judea and the neighbouring prov
inces, with the command of a military force to coerce
their payment, a measure which became the source
of long and vexatious discontents.
With the accession, nearly at the same time, of An
tiochus the Great,Jbrother of the late monarch, to the
throne of Syria, and of Ptolemy Philopator, son of
Euergetes, to that of Egypt (namely, the former in
the year 223, the latter in the year 221 B. C), the eler
ments of disturbance to the tranquillity which had
been long enjoyed by the rival states were set in mo
tion. The character of the Egyptian kings was now
reversed. The new monarch appears to have been
called Philopator in derision; he is reputed to have
murdered his father, as well as others of his family.
The attempts of the Syrians on his dominions, which
began soon after his accession, were not fortunate
during his reign. Antiochus possessed himself of
Ccele-Syria by the treachery of its governor, and ob
tained some other partial successes; but experienced
a total defeat in the year 217, and, the following year,
renounced by treaty all his claims, professedly founded
on the partition of the year 301, to Palestine and its
neighbouring districts, employing his arms thence
forward, still without speedy success, in other quar
ters. Prematurely exhausted by his vices, Ptolemy died in

168 , HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO [LECT.
the year 204, and was succeeded by his son, to whom
was given the surname of Epiphanes, illustrious, and
to whom Sosibius was appointed guardian by the sol
diery. Taking advantage of the weakness of a minor
ity, Antiochus possessed himself again of Ccele-Syria,
adding to it now Phoenicia and Palestine. The Egyp
tians had recourse, in this exigency, to the Roman pow
er, which had become formidable and widely known,
since the recent termination of the Second Punic War,
under the conduct of Scipio. The Senate, solicited
to undertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy,
sent Lepidus to represent them in that office. The
message which he despatched to Antiochus, to respect
the dominions of the Roman people's royal ward, hav
ing met little respect on that monarch's part, an army
marched in the year 199, under Scopas, to enforce it.
He recovered the lost provinces ; but in the following
year Antiochus brought them again under his govern
ment; and this with the good-will of the Jews, who,
disgusted probably with the management of their last
Egyptian governor, aided the Syrian troops in dispos
sessing the Egyptians of their fortress on Mount Zion.
By a treaty of peace, negotiated in the year 197, An
tiochus even retained the fruits of his last conquests,
stipulating at the same time to give his daughter,
when of full age, in marriage to the young Ptolemy,
with these territories for her dowry.
The truce was of short duration, and the Romans,
agreeably to their now well-developed policy of as
suming the concerns and troubles of all nations, took
on themselves the chief burden of the long war which
followed. At length, in the year 188 B. C, they found
themselves in a condition to dictate to Antiochus igno
minious terms of pacification. The following year he
was slain in a popular tumult at Elymais, in Persia,

XLIII.] THE TIME OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 169
occasioned by an attempt to plunder the treasures of
its temple to supply his exhausted coffers.
He was succeeded by his son Seleucus Philopater,
of whose reign very little is known, the best author
ities failing in respect to it. Ptolemy Epiphanes died
by poison, six years later, having, in the course of a
dishonorable reign, done nothing which it falls within
our purpose to observe. His successor was his son,
surnamed Philometor, who, being a child of six years
of age, was placed under the guardianship of his moth
er Cleopatra.
The period beginning with the accessions of Anti
ochus the Great and Ptolemy Philopater, and ter
minating with the death of Seleucus Philopater, was
in great part one of unusual disturbance to the Jews.
During the wars of Antiochus, they necessarily ex
perienced their full share of the evils of such a state
of things, and under the government of Ptolemy Phi
lopater they had many and weighty occasions of dis
content. Having come to their temple to sacrifice, he
is said to have endeavoured to force himself into the
Holy of Holies, and on one occasion of dissatisfaction
on the king's part, he is reported to have massacred
forty thousand of their countrymen. Towards Anti
ochus, on the contrary, they appear to have been uni
formly well disposed, and to have received, in their
turn, repeated marks of friendship at his hands. Jo
sephus has preserved two important decrees of his in
their favor.*
In the year 217 B. G, Onias the Second was suc
ceeded in the high-priesthood by Simon the Second,
and he in 195 B. C. by his son Onias the Third. From
the fact related, that, in the year 187, Joseph, the farm-
* " Antiq. Jud.," Lib. xii. cap. 3, §§ 3, 4.
VOL. III. 15

170 HISTORY FROM THE CAPTIVITY. [LECT.
er of the revenues before named, sent his son Hyrca
nus to Ptolemy Epiphanes to congratulate him on the
birth of a son, it appears that, before that time, prob
ably by the treaty with the Romans in the year 188,
or by virtue of the marriage settlement in the year 197,
the possession of Palestine had reverted to Egypt ; but
it appears again to have been transferred to the Syri
ans before the death of that prince in 180; at all
events, we find it already in their possession shortly
after this time. In 176 B. G, Simon, governor of the
temple, in consequence of some dissatisfaction with the
high-priest Onias, betook himself to the governor of
Ccele-Syria under Seleucus, pretending to acquaint him
with the existence of a deposit of great treasures ip,
the temple. The king sent Heliodorus, one of his cour
tiers, to ascertain the fact, who, according to the rela
tion in the Second Book of Maccabees and Josephus,
was, while trespassing on the sacred precincts, stricken
to the ground and scourged by the supernatural at
tendants of an armed and mounted angel.
Heliodorus, returning to his master, entered into a
plot against him, hoping to usurp his throne, in the
absence of his son Demetrius, lately sent to Rome as a
hostage. Having removed Seleucus by poison, his de
sign was frustrated by the sudden arrival of the broth
er of the monarch, Antiochus, whom his nephew had
been sent to Rome to release, and who, hearing at Ath
ens, on his way home, what had befallen, made all
speed to secure his own advantage of it. This is that
Antiochus who acted so wickedly important a part in
the succeeding Jewish history. His flatterers gave
him the surname of Epiphanes, or illustrious. Others,
more candid, and more just, called him Epimanes, the
madman.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 171

LECTURE XLIV.
ISAIAH I. 1.— XII. 6.
Age and Personal Notices of Isaiah. — Case of Inscriptions, and
other Notes, prefixed and attached to the Biblical Poems. —
Arrangement of the Poems in their present Order. — Probabil
ity of Mistake of Later Comments for Parts of the Original
Writing. — Reasons for believing that the Collection of Poems,
as at present extant, was not arranged by isalah, and that it
has suffered interpolation.  question of authorship of the re
SPECTIVE Parts an Open Question, not determined by the Title,
NOR BY ANY NeW TESTAMENT AUTHORITY. — ANNOTATIONS ON THE
Poem contained in the First Chapter. — Inscription to the Poem
comprised in the second, third, and fourth chapters, and re
MARKS thereupon. — Allegory of an Unfruitful Vineyard, in the
Fifth Chapter. — Vision of God in the Sixth. — Introduction to
the Seventh Chapter. — Isaiah's Interview with Ahaz. — Denun
ciations and Promises in the Eighth Chapter, with Reference
to the expected Princely Messiah. — Rebuke of the Northern
Kingdom in the Ninth Chapter, with Threats of an Assyrian
Invasion. — Hymn of Triumph over the Discomfiture of the Assy
rian Army, in the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Chapters,'
with a Prospect of the Universal Reign of the Messiah, and of
Greatness, Felicity, and Undisturbed Peace for Israel and Judah.
The inscription prefixed to the book which bears
the name of Isaiah represents him as having lived in
the kingdom of Judah, during the reigns of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Uzziah died in the year
758, and Hezekiah ascended the throne in the year
726, B. C. If Isaiah was thirty years old at the time
when he began to appear as a preacher of righteous
ness,* he was of course sixty-two at the time of Hez
ekiah's accession. The Jews have a tradition, or a
* Is. vi. 1.

172 ISAIAH I. 1.— XII. 6. [LECT.
fable, that he lived till the reign of Manasseh, which
began twenty-eight years later still, and that, having
given offence to that prince, by comparing Jerusa
lem, under his government, to Sodom and Gomorrah, he
was condemned by him to be sawn in twain ; * and some
Christian commentators have understood his martyr
dom to be referred to by the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews. j" But, though in no way incredible,
the narration cannot be traced to any authentic source.
Some of the early Church writers have also identified
his father with the prophet Amos ; but this is by a mere
error, the latter name $ being in the Hebrew altogether
different from that of Isaiah's parent, § given in the
inscription to his book, though in Greek, as in Eng
lish, they are made to appear the same. Some of the
Rabbins, again, have represented his great consider
ation with the Jewish court as owing to consanguin
ity with the royal family ; but this idea had probably
no better origin than in a confounding of the name
Amos with that of King Amaziah, father of Uzziah.
Isaiah is mentioned in the Books of Kings and Chron
icles. ||
A subject here comes under our notice, which might
without impropriety have been introduced in con
nection with the prophetical poems of more ancient
date; but, as its earlier discussion would have led
to no important practical results, I have preferred to
reserve it till now. It is that of the inscriptions, and
other historical and otherwise explanatory notices,
which occur in the text of the prophetical books as
* Comp. Justin Martyr, " Dialog.," p. 213, edit. Paris.
t Heb. xi. 37.
X DinjJ.
§ Tins*.
|| 2 Kings xix. 5 - xx. 19 ; 2 Chron. xxvi. 22 ; xxxii. 20.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 173
we now possess them. Are they to be understood as
having proceeded in every case, or in most cases, or in
a given case, from the writer himself, or from some
other hand, — that of some editor, or some possessor of
a single copy, who added such notes for the general
good, or his own personal satisfaction, and from whom
they have come to us, incorporated in the volume 1 It
is obvious that the question may be, in some circum
stances, of material importance. And it relates, also,
though in this aspect it can scarcely be so interesting,
to the succession, whether chronological or not, in
which separate productions of a writer are arranged.
In the prophetical poems to which we have attend
ed, we have already met with these inscriptions ; with
one each in Amos and Joel, and with two in Hosea,
at the beginning of their books respectively. If con
sidered as not proceeding from the authors themselves,
they are still prima, facie evidence of the authorship
of the books. Their evidence of this kind, there is in
the case of Joel nothing to refute ; on the contrary,
the brief simplicity of his title makes it probable that it
proceeded from his own hand. In the Books of Amos
and Hosea, which have dates, the statement in the in
scription is confirmed by the contents. But a careful
reader will hardly fail to ask himself, whether it would
be natural for Amos and Hosea, sending forth their
own works, to preface them with an inscription ac
quainting their readers with the names of the princes
under whom they lived. The thing would seem too
notorious to admit of being thus recorded, until such
time as they had passed away. It vis fit and interesting
matter of history, but not of contemporaneous notice.*
* Also, there is an incongruity in the immediate juxtaposition of a second
inscription at the beginning of the book of Hosea, which makes the genuine
ness of the former suspicious. 15*

174 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
In this respect, as in others, " the thing which hath
been, it is that which shall be." A man may collect,
arrange, and publish his own writings, or it may have
to be done for him by another. If the writings be, as,
to a great extent, what we call the prophecies are, oc
casional poems, they will then particularly need, in
order to their intelligent perusal, to be preceded by a
title, and perhaps even by that extended form of title
to which we give the technical name of argument ; and
if the writer has failed to make this provision for him
self, later readers have reason to feel exceedingly grate
ful to any one who, with competent information on the
subject, has undertaken to supply the omission. But
it may be that in some case they may see reason to
doubt whether the person who undertook this office
did possess competent information. And, if they fail
of satisfaction upon this point, they are of course not
bound by his authority, as they would have been by
the author's own. On the contrary, they should then
discard it, and do as well as they can without it, which
at all events will be better than being misled by it.
Once more, when a book has been arranged and
consolidated by its author, or some other person, it is
liable, while circulated and multiplied in manuscript,
to collect additions, — made in the margin, and other
wise, with the best intentions, — which in a remote
age will become so merged and lost in the original,
that only a careful critical inquiry, and perhaps not
that, will separate them from it. With our familiar
enjoyment of the facilities and expedients of the art
of printing, it requires some little reflection to help
us to perceive how great an exposure of this latter
kind would attend upon written books. We distin
guish our titles, arguments, and other notes, by a differ
ent type, a break in the page, an arrangement in the

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 175
margin, or some other such mechanical contrivance.
But these are curious and convenient refinements inci
dent to a modern invention. We have no knowledge
that the ancients had any thing like it. With them
every thing which went upon the page made the
same appearance* on it. Again; when a reader, in
our times, sets down his remarks, for his own or others'
use, by the side of what he is studying, the different
character betrays that what he has inscribed in the
margin is no part of the book. Not so with manu
script copies. A subsequent transcriber would often,
in perfect good faith, insert in the body of the text
what he saw in the margin of his apograph, supposing
it to have been an accidental omission of the previous
copyist, which had been observed by a reader, and rec
tified by such an imperfect insertion.
We might pronounce beforehand, that it was quite
impossible, from the nature of the case, that the Jew
ish books should escape these influences ; and that
they have not? is a fact quite certain. As to the
mere names of books, it is well known that in several
cases, as in the Law, the Jews gave one title, and the
authors of the Septuagint version, whom we have most
ly followed, another. Further; whoever undertakes
to defend the authenticity of the Pentateuch does it
by means of allowing — else his argument would not
stand — that certain parts of that book, or series of
hooks, did not proceed from the hand of Moses. They
doubtless belong to a later age ; and if they were parts
of the original, then to a later age must the original
be referred. Again; in the Psalms, as we shall see
in due time, it is agreed among the critics, and is quite
f The Talmudists and Masorites, it is true, put their commentaries into
a kind of shape of marginal notes. But neither were ancients, in the sense
which is here in question.

176 ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. , [LECT.
unquestionable, that many of the titles, some of which
extend to the length of what is called an argument,
are not genuine ; and some are not so much as cor
rect. We may witness the propensity to construct
these arguments, and that, too, with exceedingly small
expense of inquiry, deliberation, or judgment, even
when it is done with perfect honesty, in the captions
to the chapters of our English Bibles. It is to be
feared that there are not a few ignorant readers, who
suppose these to be of the same origin and authority
with the text, and to make part of it. The considera
tion which has come to be entertained for them on the
part of persons better informed, in consequence of their
having long occupied the place where they stand, and
the character of an undefined sacredness which has
come to attach to them, may be observed in the
indisposition of such persons to have them displaced.
There is not the same danger of their being ultimately
confounded with the original by readers of any infor
mation, because a comparison with the Hebrew, which
is so far a fixed test, immediately reveals their recent
date. But there was the same reason for Hebrew
transcribers to add such notes, as for English transla
tors to do it ; and when they were added in the same
language and character, it is indisputable that there
was serious danger of their distinct origin being lost
sight of.
Now it is clear that, whatever other view we may
take of the book before us, it is a collection of poems,
written at different times and on different occasions.
So, indeed, it is declared to be, by the different head
ings of several of its divisions, indicating the subjects
and occasions of the pieces respectively. As such, it
required, for the convenience of readers, to have those
several subjects and occasions stated, as much, for in-

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 177
stance, as the Psalms, which we shall find to have
prefaces of the same description, some of them con
taining historical detail ; — or as much as the sep
arate pieces of the English poet, Gray, in some of
which the argument and notes bear no small propor
tion to the length of the poem so illustrated; and
if the proportion had been larger than it is in some
of the more obscure pieces, the reader would have had
no cause to complain.
And, as far as we yet see, such notes, now extant
in the book of Isaiah, may or may not have been
original with him, supposing the whole poetical part
of the book to be his composition. It is impossible
to assume, upon any general grounds, an affirmative
reply to the question, whether he wrote them. The
writer and editor may, and very commonly do, meet in
the same person ; but the office of editor, as distinct
from that of writer, is as legitimate and as fully rec
ognized as the writer's own.
Now the question whether the writings of Isaiah
which we have in our hands are possessed by us in
an arrangement which he himself gave them, is a
question, as we shall presently see, of interest and
consequence. And I conceive myself authorized by
the preceding remarks to say, that it is a question
upon which we cannot pronounce on any general
grounds. For aught that we have seen, the thing may
have been, and it may not. I do not yet affirm, that
there is any presumption or proof against it. But
there is no presumption for it. It is an open question.
Nor, on the supposition that all the poetry which we
now have under Isaiah's name is his, could I allow
the force of any argument founded on the idea that we
have it in the form into which he collected and ar
ranged it, until that fact should have been first proved.

178 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
If proved, it must be by arguments furnished from
the book itself; for of the time, agent, and manner of
its collection and arrangement, we have no historical
information* I believe that such proof does not ex
ist ; but that, on the contrary, what evidence we have
upon the subject goes to show, as far as any inference
can be drawn from it, that the opposite was the truth.
This question is to be before us in our examination of
the whole book. Let me only here make briefly one
or two general remarks, and ask attention to a few
phenomena, related to the question, which are present
ed in that portion of the collection which is now be
fore us.
There is no mention of King Jotham in any part of
the prophecies, nor is there any part of them contain
ing such reference to his reign as to appear clearly to
have been written during that period; an omission
which may well appear extraordinary, if, on the one
hand, the collection was made by Isaiah, and on the
other, according to statements therein contained,f he
assumed his office just before the beginning of that
monarch's reign of sixteen years. There are passages
which appear to be but fragments, and such as an au
thor would not have left in so maimed a condition ; J as
has been observed, among others, by Jahn, who, while
he understands Isaiah to have written the whole book,
does not suppose him to have arranged it, and even
argues that it was not arranged till subsequently to
the captivity. The author would hardly have put in
to his own collection of his own works a composition
of Hezekiah. § He would hardly have placed the pas-
* The Talmudical story of Hezekiah's having caused a collection to be
made deserves no credit. See Bertholdt, " Historischkritische Einleit-
ung," u. s. f., § 360.
f Is. i. 1 ; vi. 1. X E' S- Is- xiv. 24, et seq. ; xxi. 11, 12.
§ See Is. xxxviii. 9, et seq.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 179
sage which appears to relate to his first assumption of
a public character* anywhere but at the beginning
of his book.-]- Nor is the order that of subjects,
which, if he did not prefer a chronological order, the
author, when he came to compile, might be expected
to choose; else the thirteenth and twenty-first chap
ters would not be disjoined. The genuineness of the
title, X considered as Isaiah's, is subject to suspicion
from the same cause which I mentioned as affecting
those prefixed to Amos and Hosea.§ Again ; that in
the first portion of the book we are met by verses
and parts of verses which were not originally from
Isaiah's hand, but are interpolations of what origi
nally were glosses, I think will be admitted by every
careful reader. || If the sentences I here refer to are
not interpolated glosses, they afford specimens of ba
thos which it is wrong to attribute needlessly to such
a writer as Isaiah. It is well known that the critical
editions of the New Testament have purged it of
many such. And what was to prevent their forcing
themselves into manuscripts of the Old Testament, as
well as of the New 1
The connection requires that I should here add,
though we have not yet arrived at the point where we
are to pursue the inquiry, that the question respect
ing the authorship of parts of this book is also an
open question. It is not a question to be prejudged
on any premises of which, at this stage in the course
of our investigation, we are possessed. If I were to
ask on what obvious grounds the whole contents of
* See Is. vi. 1, et seq.
T For a list of other alleged violations of chronological order in the
book, see Bertholdt's " Einleitung," § 363.
X Is. i. 1.
§ See above, p. 173.
|| See, for instance, Is. vii. 17, 20 ; viii. 7; ix. 15.

180 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
the book are to be ascribed to Isaiah, the answer
would probably be, on the grounds of the inscription
at the beginning, and of the current opinion of the
Jews, which, at the earliest period of our acquaintance
with it, attributed the book to him,
I do not call in question the authority of the in
scription, though we do not know by whom it was
written. I take it as it stands. And I ask to what
its authority extends. The language of the inscription
runs thus : " The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz,
which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the
days of Uzziah," &c* The writer's testimony, then,
whoever he was, whether Isaiah or some other, goes
to this point, that what follows concerning Judah and
Jerusalem was written by Isaiah. His evidence, trust
worthy as it may be, covers no more ground. But the
subject of Judah and Jerusalem is dismissed, and an
other supersedes it, which is pursued at greater length,
from the beginning of the thirteenth chapter. Who
shall say, then, that this collection of twelve chapters
was not all, as the terms import, which the author of
the title had before him at the time of writing it, and
that what follows was not added, at some subsequent
time, without any agency or knowledge of his %
Again ; I do not deny, that, in the course of the
seven centuries between Isaiah and our Lord, this
book had come to be known currently under Isaiah's
name, and that, in the New Testament, the book is
ascribed to him; rather, it should be said, is quoted
under his name. But I suggest, that this can hardly
be the foundation of an argument that the whole book
was his composition, unless, where it is cited, we are
able to show, which certainly we are not, that the
* Is. i. 1.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 181
question at issue was a question respecting its authen
ticity, or else that an argument was there treated
which would be void, unless the popularly reputed au
thorship was real. It is the universal practice to
quote a book by the name by which it is commonly
known. If I had occasion to refer to the poems of
Ossian, I should call them by that name, if I meant
to be immediately understood, even if it was in my
private knowledge or judgment that they were wholly,
or in part, of more recent date than what is assigned
to them in that designation. The Hagiographa are
spoken of in the New Testament under the appellation
of " the Psalms," * though the Psalms make but a
part of that collection. So Ezra was the name given
by the Jews to Ezra and Nehemiah, and Judges to
Judges and Ruth; f and we habitually speak of the
Psalms of David, meaning thereby the whole Psal
ter, though we know that many of the Psalms, actu
ally and ostensibly, had a different author. Watts's
" Psalms of David, imitated in the Language of the
New Testament," is a version of all the Psalms, and
not of those only which the poet, or which others,
have attributed to David. Who shall say, without
further evidence, that the book before us was not in
like manner named Isaiah's, a potiori, because he was
the principal and most esteemed writer of those whose
compositions the collection has preserved ]
I proceed to some remarks on that first portion of
the book, to which the inscription, according to its
terms, applies, and which, as far as I can see, it rightly
describes as containing productions of Isaiah, though
in a few instances this position has been doubted.
The first poem, or prophecy, in this collection oc-
* Luke xxiv. 44. t Comp. Vol. I. p. 39.
VOL. III. 16

182 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
cupies the first chapter. I cannot regard the title in
the first verse as belonging to it alone, (but rather,
as has been said, to the first twelve chapters of the
book,) inasmuch as, being but one composition, it
would not be referred alone to the times of several
kings. In it Jehovah is represented, in a high strain
of poetry, as addressing the language of reproof to
his corrupt and degenerate people* Their worship,
they are told, affords him little satisfaction, while in
all the rest of their conduct they boldly transgress his
law.-]" If they continue impenitent, the desolations of
war shall pursue them, but plenty and prosperity shall
reward their return to their allegiance. J The prevail
ing iniquities have been patronized, instead of checked,
by the rulers. § But in the vengeance which awaits
them, their trusts shall be. transferred to better men ;
and under a worthier administration sinners shall be
discomfited and abashed, and Jerusalem be known
again for " the faithful city." || Such are the clear and
strong expressions of the prophet's public zeal and
patriotic hope. The allusion in the seventh verse has
been thought to date the passage in the reign of
Ahaz.^[ The shed in a vineyard, and hut in a garden
of cucumbers, to which the daughter of Zion is com
pared,** were temporary shelters for the watchmen
who guarded those cooling fruits, so valued in the
East, from the incursions of foxes and jackals.ff The
sentiment is, All the old splendor of Zion is falling
back into the rudeness of a mere cabin.
The next passage occupies the four following chap-

* Is. i. 2-9. f i- 10-17. fi. 18-20.
$ i. 21-23. || i. 24-31.
•|[ Compare 2 Kings xvi. 5 ; also Lowth's note ad loc. ; and Bertholdt's
' Einleitung," $ 363.
** i- 8. ft Compare Job xxvii. 18 ; Cant. ii. 15.

XLIV] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 183
ters, unless, which I consider as quite uncertain, the
fifth chapter ought to be regarded as a separate com
position. The form of the inscription * is such, that
it may well have been written by Isaiah himself at the
head of this single poem. Literally translated, I think,
it reads, " The thing which Isaiah the son of Amoz
saw respecting Judah and Jerusalem"; or, as we
should say, " Isaiah's vision of their future fortunes,"
the vision spoken of being of the kind which I have
explained at length ; that is, a prospect or conception
of the mind, j- And it is not unlikely that whoever
wrote the inscription at the beginning of the first
chapter adopted its form in part from that which is
now before us, as will be seen from a comparison of
the two.
The subject treated in the second, third, and fourth
chapters is a future glorious condition of the Jewish
nation, $ painted by the prophet in the glowing colors
which religious and patriotic affections combine to
mingle. But it is a glory and greatness which, con
sidering the present moral condition of the people, can
only be obtained through a repentance which will
reconcile to them their now justly offended God;§
a repentance which, if their crimes be still perse
vered in, will have to be secured by heavy Divine judg
ments. ||
It is remarkable that the beautiful passage at the
beginning of the second chapter is also found in the
prophecy of Micah,^[ Isaiah's contemporary. It has
been accordingly suggested, not without probability,
that it is a composition older than either, and perhaps
well known to the nation, and so adopted by both, as
* ii. 1. t Comp. Vol. II. pp. 323, 405 el seq.
X ii. 2-4; iv. 2-6. § ii. 5-9.
|| ii. 10 -iv. 1. T[ Micah iv. 1-3.

184 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6.

[LECT.

the connection permitted, and its fitness to give forci
ble expression to the thoughts upon the mind of both
invited. But I would propose another account of it,
which to me has a peculiar kind of interest. I sup
pose that Micah may have written these lines, with
others in the same strain, which in his book follow
them, and that Isaiah, quoting them, makes them a
kind of text for the course of admonition which in his
book they precede.* On the supposition which I pre
sent, we shall understand him as writing to this effect.
" It is true that we may look for such happy times as
those which Micah has set forth to you in this descrip
tion, for God always waits to be gracious to his peo
ple. But how far off are we from them now ! If we
are ever to know such times, it must be by returning
to the integrity we have forsaken, for God does not
now look on us with favor ; j" and if we will not
earlier see the necessity of this, grievous judgments
will be sent to make us do it." Then follows the long
passage in which this latter topic is urged, J and the
whole closes with another in the same strain with
that, common to Isaiah and Micah, with which the
piece is opened, setting forth that when sinners have
been destroyed, and holy men only are left in Jerusa
lem, § —
" When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of
Zion,
And have removed the blood of Jerusalem from the midst of her,
Judging and consuming with his mighty power," —
then, and not before, will all of most glorious that
has been augured for the nation come to pass ;
* At the time of writing the above, I had not met with such an exposi
tion in any writer. I have a vague recollection of having since seen it
somewhere suggested.
t ii- 5-9. X "• 10- iv. 1.
§ iv. 2, 3.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 185
" Then shall Jehovah create upon the whole extent of Mount Zion, and
upon her places of assembly,
A cloud and smoke by day,
And the brightness of a flaming fire by night ;
Yea, for all that is glorious shall there be a shelter ;
He shall be a tent by day for a shadow from the heat,
And for a refuge and shelter from the storm and rain." — iv. 4-6.
In the fourth verse of the . second chapter I would
read, instead of He, " It [that is, Jerusalem] shall be a
judge of many nations." The noun Jerusalem is of
the feminine gender, and the verb is in the masculine,
but this anomaly in concord is not uncommon in He
brew. In the second verse of the fourth chapter, by
" the branch of Jehovah," which is to bear excellent
and beautiful fruit, I understand the people, the branch
which Jehovah had planted, agreeably to a figure re
peatedly used.* The allusion in the fifth verse of the
fourth chapter is to the pillar of cloud and flame said
to have accompanied Israel in the Exodus.
Whether a separate composition or not, the fifth
chapter pursues the subject with which that just re
marked on is principally occupied, — the subject of the
Jewish people's disobedience, and the judgments which
it was provoking. At its beginning, the prophet
speaks of his friend's having had a vineyard, and of
his treatment and complaints of it, in like express
terms to what are used respecting Hosea's wives and
children, at the beginning of that writer's book ; and
the use which the narrative is to serve is afterwards
explained in the two cases in a similar manner. f In
the former case, few persons doubt, I presume, that
the narrative is merely fictitious and illustrative, while
in the latter it is often taken to be literal. It belongs
to those who suppose such a distinction in the proper
* As in Psalm lxxx. 8 - 16, and in Isaiah's next chapter.
f Is. v. 7 ; Hos. i. 2, 4, 6, 9.
16*

186 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
course of interpretation to sustain it. — National ruin
in its customary form of hostile invasion is denounced
against a sinful people in the last six verses of the
chapter. And in the thirteenth verse, in an enumera
tion of national disasters, captivity is mentioned along
with famine. He who should undertake to denounce
national disasters with any specification could not be
expected to omit one which, according to the customs
of the time, was so reasonably to be looked for as the
concomitant of weakness and defeat.
Of the sixth chapter, which is a separate composi
tion, Gesenius and Lowth, with one trifling difference
from each other, have given the beginning, as far as
the eighth verse, as prose. Dr. Noyes has done the
same. I cannot think this arrangement correct. To
my view, this passage has, in its spirit, as much of the
stamp of the highest poetry as almost any other
which could be selected from the Old Testament.
And as to the peculiar rhetorical structure of Hebrew
verse, the exact correspondence of parallel lines would
be sought for in vain in great part of this book, uni
versally acknowledged to be 'poetry; the course of
narrative, essential to the topic here treated, would
naturally exclude it to a great degree ; and there are
instances of it in its strictest form in the second, third,
and seventh verses.
I understand the prophet here as resorting to a sub
lime, but perfectly authorized, style of poetical Vision,*
to represent himself to the people as constrained by
an uncontrollable sense of God's glory, and view to
his honor, to testify in his behalf, even if he should
* The interpretation which makes Isaiah relate here a real transaction
involves the supposition of his having intended to declare that God mani
fested himself visibly, in this awful pomp, in the presence of multitudes,
in the always frequented temple.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 187
have to present himself to averse eyes, to speak in
deaf ears, to assail gross and insensible hearts. " As
long ago," says he, "as 'the year in which King Uzziah
died,' I felt this holy impulse." The note may be no
more than a date, but I incline to think it equivalent
to an intimation that his thoughts were powerfully
led to this subject in the course of the solemn medita
tions excited by the decease of that monarch ; as if he
had said, — " In the mourning which I shared with a
nation bereft of its head, [or, if a common opinion of
his belonging to the royal family be correct, ' While
my heart was burdened at once with public sorrow
and with private woe,'] I was led solemnly and anx
iously to think, as well I might be, of the condition
of the bereaved realm. I knew that when the earthly
monarch was removed, the heavenly monarch was
still there ; for there stood his temple, his palace, in
the midst of us. But was he there to convict or to
bless 1 Painfully I found myself compelled to own
that the former was his office. My melancholy
thoughts turned towards his holy temple. There my
gloomily excited fancy pictured him, invested with a
terrible glory. Methought I saw him in his own
house, reposed on a lofty throne, the masses of his
robe sweeping the vast and gorgeous courts, and a
retinue of winged seraphs standing obedient, with
bowed and covered heads, around him. When they
shouted his praises, the awful pile tottered from battle
ment to base, and curling clouds of fragrant incense
thickened and rolled. Then I said, ' Alas for me, that
I, unworthy child of a recreant race, should look on
the majesty which we have so provoked and wronged ! '
My thought was only one of terror and despair.*
* vi. 1-5.

188 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
" But soon I was recalled to a better mind. Me-
thought one of the attendant seraphs came flying to
me, and touched my lips with a live coal which he
had snatched from the flames of the temple sacrifices,
and bade me know that henceforth I was not to give
way to the despair of sin, (for the emotions I had ex
perienced were a pledge that from me its sway was
removed,) but that I was henceforth to plead with fel
low-sinners against it, with the consuming eloquence
of lips touched as it were with fire from God's own
altar. ' Whom shall I send 1 who will go for me 1 ' I
heard the voice of God inquiring ; and when, thus an
imated and devoted to the work, I humbly offered my
self to his tasks, ' Go,' he said, ' and preach to this
people, but know that your chief disheartening work
will be, to upbraid them with their intractable unwill
ingness to hear.' I saw the discouragements of my
task. I tremblingly asked, ' How long, Lord, will
this their perversity endure I ' and I seemed to myself
to hear the reply, ' The people's obduracy will end but
with the people's ruin ; yet all is not darkness in the
prospect, for know, to nerve you, that a righteous
remnant will survive that ruin.' The impressions of
that season," we may understand Isaiah as implying,
in conclusion, " have never been effaced. I call you to
witness, my countrymen, that you have sadly fulfilled
for me the solicitudes of that day, but that, dispiriting
and undesirable as you have made my task, you have
not made me chargeable with the cowardly weakness
of resigning it." *
The remainder of the first twelve chapters, I think,
is most conveniently distributed into four parts ; -j- the
• vi. 6-13.
¦(• Doederlein gives the whole as one piece ; but I prefer the arrangement
of Gesenius, which is adopted by Dr. Noyes.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 189
first consisting of the seventh chapter ; the second, of
the eighth chapter, and the first seven verses of the
ninth ; the third, of the remainder of the ninth chap
ter, and four verses of the tenth ; and the fourth, of
the residue of this division of the book.
The first two verses of the seventh chapter evidently
fall under the description of those introductions, in
tended to illustrate a poem by declaring its occasion,
on which I have remarked at length.* It appears
probable that both were from a later hand than Isa
iah's. This probability is greatest in respect to the
former verse. Isaiah can hardly be supposed to have
described with so much formality, as if he were im
parting information, an event which, during the whole
of his lifetime, was of such recent notoriety as the
alliance of Rezin and Pekah against Judah. Again,
the verse agrees almost word for word with a passage
in the Second Book of Kings,f even to the degree of
retaining the last clause, " but they could not prevail
against it " ; a remark which was entirely in place in
the compendious history which is contained in that
book, and would naturally enough be retained by a
person who was copying the rest to serve for an intro
duction to Isaiah's poem ; but which, being in antici
pation of the course of events, as set forth in Isaiah's
seventh chapter, that prophet can hardly be supposed
to have written for the place where it appears. Isaiah
may, with less improbability, be supposed to have
written the second verse, which in his time would it
self have made an intelligible introduction to what
follows ; but, because of its apparent connection with
the first, and because what it relates could hardly
need, in Isaiah's time, to be told, I incline rather to
* See above, pp. 172-177. f 2 Kings xvL 5.

190 ISAIAH I. 1.— XII. 6. [LECT.
the opposite opinion. In our version we have the
word then at the beginning of the third verse, appear
ing to be a reference to something preceding, and to
imply that the note of time in the second verse made
a part of the original composition. But the word
here translated then is merely the conjunction, which
is often used at the beginning of a composition.
The subject of the passage is an interview between
Ahaz and Isaiah, which the latter was prompted by a
holy impulse to seek, when Jerusalem was threatened
by the allied kings of Syria and Israel. The place
where it occurred was one to which Ahaz, in his
anxiety for the city's safety, had naturally repaired on
the first alarm, since the inhabitants would have to re
ly upon it for their supplies of water,* when pressed
by a besieging army.
Isaiah took with him on this occasion his son Shear-
jashub, or A remnant shall return, a circumstance men
tioned with special distinctness, and on which I have
not remarked that what I account the proper stress
(as I shall presently explain) is laid by any commen
tator. Isaiah's son bore this name agreeably to a cus
tom, not indeed peculiar to the Jews, but practised by
them, as we know, through the whole period of their
ancient history, of giving to their children names sig
nificant of some thought which had strongly impressed
itself on the parent's mind. Familiar usages are one
of the established sources of poetical imagery, and it
is this usage which is the foundation of the figurative
language at the beginning of the book of Hosea. The
idea of the future return of a remnant of Israel, what
ever be the special significance which we attach to it,
is one which is repeatedly presented in the course of

* Compare xxii. 9 ; xxxvi. 2 ; 2 Chron. xxxii. 1-4 ; Neh. ii.

13.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 191
this book. It is commonly thought that Isaiah meant
by it the return of a portion of the people from cap
tivity. I believe, that, in respect at least to some of
the instances, this exposition is erroneous, and that
the phrase denotes that future repentance of a portion
of the guilty people for which the prophet hoped, ac
cording to a well-known meaning of the Hebrew word
here translated return.*
The object of the prophet in this interview was to
recover Ahaz from the state of discouragement into
which it seems he had fallen, in the contemplation of
the impending dangers. " Fear not," he says, " these
threats of the Israelites and Syrians, but believe that
the Lord, who yet loves Judah, will frown upon their
enterprise. Trust that neither of your enemies will be
permitted to extend his possessions by this war, but
that Rezin will still have only Damascus for the capi
tal city of his dominions, and Pekah only Samaria for
the metropolis of Israel. If you despair of this, you
cannot expect to prosper." j-
The eighth verse has given rise to much discussion
on the part of the commentators, who would show that
it contains a prediction with a precise note of time,
such as to prove that Isaiah possessed supernatural
knowledge of the future. But I consider it impossi
ble to fix upon any dates for this interview of Isaiah
with Ahaz, on the one hand, and the destruction of the
Israelitish state, on the other, which shall place those
events sixty-five years apart, as the text expressly
does, provided it is genuine, and means any thing of

* Compare vi. 13; x. 21, 22.
f Is. vii. 4-9. — "The son of Tabeal " (6) ; who he was we do not
know, but it seems he was some person understood by Isaiah to have been
pitched upon by the allied kings for their viceroy at Jerusalem, when they
should have seized it.

192 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
the kind. Jerusalem was threatened, on the occasion
referred to, in the year 742 B. C, and Israel fell under
the Assyrian arms in the year 721, making an interval
of twenty-one years, instead of sixty-five. Very good
reasons have been given for believing the clause to be
spurious ; * that is, that it is a gloss, containing an
erroneous calculation, which has found its way into
the text. But if genuine, so far from proving mirac
ulous foresight on the writer's part, it would seem to
be a sufficient proof of the contrary.
I understand the tenth and eleventh verses to be a
continuation of Isaiah's address to Ahaz, and I would
translate the verb in the tenth verse in the present
tense, just as at the beginning of the seventh.
" Jehovah says further to Ahaz : —
" ' Ask for thyself a sign from Jehovah thy God.' "
By the word sign, in this place, I understand, not, as
has been done, a present token that God will hereafter
interpose for Judah's deliverance, but the desired Di
vine manifestation or interposition for that purpose,
itself. Such is often the meaning of the Hebrew
word here answering to sign.~\ So interpreted, Isaiah
represents himself as calling upon Ahaz, instead of
giving up all for lost, to pray to God for a manifesta
tion of himself in his protecting providence ; to God,
who is able to interpose for his rescue with the pow
ers of the earth or of the sky. Ahaz, in his gloomy
weakness, replies, " I will not ask ; it would be no
better than a tempting of Jehovah." J And then the
expostulation of the prophet proceeds. "Listen to
me, son of David," he says. " It is little to say that
* Comp. Eichhorn, " Einleitung in das A. T.," § 531.
t Deut. iv. 34, vi. 22, vii. 19; Neh. ix. 10.
X Is. vii. 12.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 193
you disgust us men with such unkingly despondency.
You disgust my God likewise. Therefore God will
send you a sign of a different kind from what I have
bid you ask, — a manifestation of himself in his ven
geance. Speedily shall it come. Look at that child,
whom the young woman has borne* She may call
the name of that child Immanuel, as fitly as he has
been called by another name, for truly in his day
God will be with us. He will be with us in manifes
tations of his displeasure. | Before that infant shall
have changed his child's food for that of mature age,
— before he shall have come to know what to choose
and what to reject, — the land for which thou trem-
blest shall be made desolate before its two kings
[that is, the two kings, Rezin and Pekah, who will
have overrun and possessed it]. Yes, Jehovah shall
bring upon you such distresses as since the time of
the partition of the kingdoms you have not known." J
I do not pursue the paraphrase. The prophet goes
on with threats of public disaster permitted for the
punishment of public sins, similar to what are con
stantly found in other parts of these writings. § The
last clause in the seventeenth verse, " even the king of
Assyria," and a similar one in the twentieth, appear to
be glosses. The eighteenth verse, if taken for predic
tion, would seem to announce that the threatened dis
asters were to befall Judah through invasions of the
Assyrians and Egyptians, which, however, we know
was not the fact. The language in the last five ver-
* The word 7KhlL means a young woman, married or unmarried. By
" the young woman " I understand him to mean the mother of his son
Shearjashub, to whom he points ; and the verb and participle which follow
should, I think, be translated in the past tense ; has conceived and borne,
instead of "shall conceive and bear."
j- See Gesenius's Lexicon, ad verb. D#, B. 1, c.
X Is. vii. 13-17. § vii. 18-25.
VOL. III. 17

194 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
ses signifies, that the land shall be reduced to such a
solitude that the few who remain may live in abun
dance and luxury, for they may go hunting where now
stand the choicest vineyards, and in what are now
the fairest fields and gardens they may pasture their
flocks and herds, as on a common, an unvisited and
unclaimed waste.
The incident recorded in the first four verses of the
eighth chapter, namely, the giving by Isaiah of a sig
nificant name to another son, appears to have occurred
not long before the taking of Damascus by the As
syrians.* That the transaction was a real one is,
I think, to be inferred from the second verse. If, as
might be argued with some probability from the first
verse of the following chapter, f it was not recorded till
after the downfall of the Israelitish kingdom, we see,
in the resemblance between parts of the seventh and
eighth chap ters, J a reason why the two passages have
been arranged to stand together. I understand the
prophet as saying, in the use of language common in
such a connection, that he found himself prompted, by
his persuasion of an impending downfall of Syria and
Samaria under the Assyrian arms, to give to a child a
name significant of this his expectation, and to enroll
that name solemnly in a register, perhaps a register
in the public archives. § In the second verse, as I un
derstand him, he says, " I may call to witness Uriah
and Zechariah that I did so." || " My wife," he con-
* Comp. Is. viii. 4 with 2 Kings xvi. 9.
f I say "with some probability"; for the force of p'tffNT and tlinx
see p. 195, note ||.
X Comp. Is. vii. 14-16 with viii. 1-4.
§ Is. viii. 1. — "With a man's pen"; that is, with a common writ
ing stylus. I see no authority for the version " in the manner of a com
mon man."
|| "May call to witness"; the paragogic n expresses the potential
sense.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 195
tinues, " had borne me a son, and I did call him by this
name, agreeably to the design I had conceived. And
I meant by it to intimate my persuasion, that speedily,
even before he should learn to articulate his earliest
words, Damascus and Samaria should be spoiled by
Assyrian invaders." *
Isaiah goes on to say, that, if counsels favorable
to the Syrians shall prevail in Judea, the Jews too
will share with that people the evils which are impend
ing on the part of the Assyrian empire; God will
then be with them for judgment, j- But that, on the
contrary, he will be with them for protection, if they
will sanctify and fear him, though single transgres
sors shall meet their punishment. J " For such signs
and such manifestations," says the prophet, " do I and
the children whom God has given me trustingly wait,
though now he hides his face.§ Meanwhile, let us
seek to learn what his purposes are, not from necro
mancers and wizards, but from the exposition which he
has given in his written law of the principles of his
government. If they refuse to respond to the dictates
of that law, in which there is no obscurity, only dis
tress and darkness shall befall them, a distress and
darkness like what is now extended [or, impending] ||

* Uriah the priest, spoken of in viii. 2, is the same who is mentioned in
2 Kings xvi. 11, and Zechariah is perhaps the same who appears in 2 Chron.
xxix. 13 ; at all events the prophet Zechariah, the son of Barachiah^lived
two hundred years later. The custom of summoning witnesses to substan
tiate an important act is recognized in Jer. xxxii. 10.
f Is. viii. 5-8. The Septuagint translator appears to have understood
the word Immanuel, in viii. 8, in the same sense which I have endeavoured
to convey above.
X viii. 9-16.
§ viii. 17, 18. Not, "we are for signs and wonders," but we wait for
them. The word wait, expressed in viii. 17, is to be understood in viii. 18.
|| viii. 19 -ix. 1. The rendering "in which there is no obscurity," in
viii. 20, is Lowth's. Dr. Noyes's "now," in ix. 1, has no correspond-

196 ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. [LECT.
over the provinces of the Israelitish kingdom. But
I am not speaking," says Isaiah (in a strain continued
to the end of this passage), " either for Judah or for Is
rael, of a darkness which will be suffered to be per
manent. God has better designs for his people. When
he has sufficiently chastised, he will restore them. If
for a season he allows gentile darkness to spread over
the Northern tribes, in good time he will cause a light
to extend from them into the neighbouring gentile
provinces. The oppressor's yoke and the taskmaster's
scourge will be broken, when that great deliverer,
whom our nation looks for, shall appear." *
" For to us a child is born,
To us a son is given,
And the government shall be'upon his shoulder,
And he shall be called
Wonderful, counsellor, mighty potentate,
Everlasting father, prince of peace.
His dominion shall be great,
And peace without end shall rest
Upon the throne of David and his kingdom ;
He shall fix and establish it
Through justice and equity,
Henceforth and foT ever.
The zeal of Jehovah of hosts will do this." — ix. 6, 7.f
The third passage before us is a poem of great regu
larity, the parts terminating at intervals with a uni
form close.J It consists of a rebuke of Israel for its
ing particle in the original. And the particles rendered "of old," and
" in future times," may fitly be understood of earlier and later times, both
future to the writer.
* ix. 1-5.
t The words given in our version, "the mighty God, the everlasting
Father," are perfectly well translated the mighty potentate, 'the father of the
age, (that is, the coming age of a new institution,) and are in fact so ren
dered in some of the ancient versions.
X See ix. 12, 17, 21, and x. 4. — This refrain may be naturally inter
preted as the reiteration of a call upon the people of Judea to take warning
by the fate of their Israelitish brethren.

XLIV.] ISAIAH I. l.-XII. 6. 197
prevailing sins, and threatens it with judgments which
shall befall it through an invasion of the Assyrian
armies. " Already," says the prophet to the people of
Israel, " God is stirring up the enemies of your ally,
Rezin, [namely, the Assyrians,] against him, and while
they assail Rezin on one side of you, and the Philis
tines on the other, they will not fail to devour with
full jaws your intervening territory." *
The last passage I take to be a hymn of triumph
over that overthrow of the Assyrian king, Sennache
rib, before Jerusalem, which is recorded in the Second
Book of Kings.-|- I would propose for the twenty-second
and twenty-third verses of the tenth chapter a different
rendering from that which, with immaterial variations,
has, as far as I know, always been given, and which
breaks the continuity of the sense. The prophet is
speaking, not of continued affliction, but of the effect
which a divinely wrought deliverance will have, or
ought to have. " They shall no more lean upon him
that smote them"; namely, the perfidious Assyrian,
their former ally. " They shall lean upon Jehovah,"
&c.J And he goes on thus : —
" If thy people, O Israel, have been as the sand of the sea, [and if only
a remnant of it survives,]
Yet the remnant shall return [or, repent].
The devastation is now finished [not '* decreed "] ;
It overflows into merey ;
For an end, a completion [of his judgments], in the midst of the land,
hath the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, now wrought." — x. 22, 23.
" SuCh," the prophet continues, " was God's pur
pose of deliverance for Judah. Jehovah said, [that
* Is. ix. 8-x. 4. — ix. 15 is evidently an interpolation.
f 2 Kings xix. 3-5. — Gesenius's rendering is better, I think, than that of
our common version : —
" Against a godless people I sent him," &c. (Isaiah x. 6.
X Isaiah x. 20. 17*

198 ISAIAH I. 1. — XII. 6. [LECT.
is, in his own purpose,] that he would deliver his peo
ple, as he had done in Egypt.* He would let their
enemy pursue his triumphant march to their very
walls, but there he would discomfit and ruin him." f
" Nor," he goes on, " are all his purposes of mercy yet
accomplished, but the national prosperity thus secured
shall be made complete by the coming of that great
prince of David's house whom all the nation longs
for." The greatness of this prince's character and
reign, and the people's gratitude for his accession, are
the subject of the two remaining chapters. Under his
government Judah and Israel, cordially reunited, with
all their wanderers restored, shall make successful
war together against the nations which have oppressed
them. J They shall manifest together a pious grati
tude to the God who has redeemed them, § and shall
enjoy together a kind of golden age. ||

* x. 24-27. f x. 28-34 ; comp. 2 Kings xviii. 17 -xix. 37.
X xi. 11-16. § xii. || xi. 1-10.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. 199

LECTURE XLV.
ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8.
Supposed Prophecy of the Capture of Babylon by the Medes and
Persians under Cyrus. — Question concerning the Authorship
of the Poem. — Antiquity of the Empires mentioned. — True
Interpretation of the Passage. — Denunciations of Calamity
against the assyrians, philistines, and moabites. — war with
Israel and Syria, and Alliance with the Assyrians. — Assyrian
Invasion and Defeat. — Revolutions in Egypt. — Warnings against
an Alliance with that Kingdom. — Invasion of the "Desert of
the Sea," or Babylon. — Questions concerning the Authenticity
and Meaning of the Passage. — Fragments relating to Idumea
and Arabia. — Peril and Rescue of the "Valley of Vision," or
Jerusalem. — Denunciations against Tyre. — Common Interpreta
tion of the Passage.— -Deficiency in the Historical Evidence
of the Supposed Capture of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. — Captiv
ity of the People of the Northern Kingdom. — Expostulations
against the Blindness of the Jews. — Further Protest against
an Egyptian Alliance, and Exhortations to seek Security in
Reliance on Jehovah. — Future Virtue and Prosperity of the
People. — Triumph over the Discomfiture of the Assyrian Army.
— Calamities of the Edomites, and Glory of God's Chosen Peo
ple. — Historical Passage identical with one in the Second
Book of Kings, and embracing two Poems.
The first division of that portion of the book of
Isaiah to which we next proceed comprehends eleven
chapters, and is mostly composed of poems and frag
ments denouncing calamities against foreign nations
known to the Jews, as Babylon, Assyria, Philistia,
Moab, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Idumsea, Arabia, and
Tyre. A few passages are interspersed relating to
Jewish affairs. It does not appear what principle of
arrangement, if any, was followed in making up the

200 ISAIAH XIII. L — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
collection. It is miscellaneous and disjointed, without
any chronological or other order, which can now be
discerned. The thirteenth and fourteenth chapters have fur
nished a remarkable example of the presumptuous fa
cility with which, in Scriptural interpretation, conclu
sions the most important are deduced from the most
insufficient premises. These chapters contain a de
nunciation of the wrath of Jehovah against the im
pious kingdom of Babylon, to be expressed in the
usual ways of national disaster and ruin ; and for the
instrument of its overthrow is specified the rising
power of the Medes. In the course of time, Babylon
was besieged and taken by a Median and Persian
army, as Nineveh had been taken before by the Medes
and Babylonians, and as both cities have been taken
by other forces in later, and, no doubt, in earlier, ages.
Building on this superstructure, Mr. Home * expa- *
tiates on the " punctual fulfilment " of a prophecy
" probably delivered in the reign of Ahaz, about two
hundred years before its accomplishment " ; and the
same has been the strain of remark of all the English
and of most other commentators.
1. But before we can reasonably rest in such a con
clusion, we must have some satisfactory evidence, at
least, that this passage was written by Isaiah. And
such evidence is not to be had. External proof there
is none. We have no historical knowledge of the
sources whence the various compositions and frag
ments, collected at last in this book, were derived.
And, unless this statement can be disproved, there is
no good foundation for the momentous inference which
has been drawn from the assumption of their being
* " Introduction," &c, Vol. II. p. 254.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. 201
all genuine productions of Isaiah. But there is also
some evidence — more or less weighty, as different
persons will consider it — on the other side. Critics
have remarked a difference between the general tone
and style of the chapters under our notice, and those
of the undisputed writings of Isaiah contained in the
first twelve chapters, and described in the inscription
at the beginning of the first chapter, as his prophecies
" concerning Judah and Jerusalem." They have also
pointed out a difference in various single words and
phrases commonly used in one and the other in cor
responding connections, and forms of language betray
ing a later age than that assigned to the prophet.*
2. But if we remain of the opinion that this poem
was probably written, not after the taking of Babylon
by Cyrus, but between one and two centuries before,
it will be a very unsafe conclusion, that its author
possessed a supernatural knowledge of distant future
events. He seems to threaten Babylon with an over
throw by the Medes. Who shall say that this was
not in Isaiah's time an event sufficiently likely to take
place (and likely to take place even earlier than in
fact it did), to justify his menace of it when speak
ing of the retribution which a just God could not but
have in store for " the haughtiness of the tyrants " ]
Who knows enough of the political relations of the
time, to deny that the rising power of the Medes was
just the instrument by which a sagacious observer
would have said that the insolent pride of Babylon
was doomed ultimately to be put down ] To this the
commentators reply, that " in the age of Isaiah there
was no Chaldean monarchy, nor were the Medes and
Elamites, who are predicted to be the destroyers of
* For specimens, the reader is referred to Gesenius's " Commentar uber
den Isaia," Vol. II. pp. 448 et seq., and Knobel, " Der Prophet Isaia,"
p. 89.

202 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
the Chaldean monarchy, nations of any celebrity." *
But no assertion can be more unfounded.-)' The
names of Chaldea, of Babel, and of Elam, or Per
sia, appear as those of powerful states as early as the
time of the composition of the Book of Genesis, J
seven hundred years before Isaiah ; and as to Babylon
we read, in the Second Book of Kings, § that a per
fidious embassy from Berodach-Baladan, its monarch,
to Hezekiah, affected the prophet with extreme con
cern. Further, we do not know the time of Isaiah's
death. And especially, if he lived, as the current
Jewish tradition affirmed, down to the time of Ma
nasseh, the greatness of Babylon, and the rival great
ness of Media, may have been materially developed at
the time of the writing of this poem. Nay, more
than this. According to the history in Chronicles, ||
Manasseh himself was carried captive to Babylon;
and this event must either have taken place during
the first existence of Babylon as an independent
state,^[ or, if after its annexation to Assyria by Esar
haddon, still so soon after, that this change in the
political condition of the invaders would hardly be
known in Judea.
3. The advocates of the theory of a supernatural
foreknowledge manifested in this instance provide
contradictions for themselves. The writer, if he is to
•be understood as assuming that character, must be un
derstood as predicting what did not in fact occur. He
says, —
* Jahn, "Introd. ad Lib. V. T." Sec. II. Cap. 2, § 107.
f See above, pp. 71, 72, 151. Jahn himself says elsewhere, "The
Medes, almost a hundred years before Isaiah and Hezekiah, had, under their
king, Arbaces, allied with Beleses, the governor of Babylon, overthrown the
first Assyrian monarchy." TJbi supra, § 104.
X Comp. Gen. xi. 1, 28 ; xiv. 1. § 2 Kings xx. 12-19.
|| 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11. TT Comp. pp. 71, 143, note.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. 203
" Her time is near,
And her days shall not be prolonged." — xiii. 22.
This is language scarcely to be used of an event two
centuries distant, — a time very long, on the contrary,
for the ascendancy of any state.
Again, the natural, not to say necessary, interpreta
tion of the words, on the hypothesis advanced, would
make the writer represent an utter demolition and des
olation of Babylon as immediately consequent upon
its capture by Cyrus.
" Behold I stir up against them the Medes,
Who make no account of silver,
And as to gold, they do not regard it.
Their bows shall strike down the young men,
And on the fruit of the womb they shall have no compassion ;
Their eyes shall not pity the children.
So shall Babylon, the glory of kingdoms,
The pride and boast of the Chaldeans,
Be like Sodom and Gomorrah, which God overthrew.
It shall not be inhabited for ever ;
Nor shall it be dwelt in, from generation to generation ;
Nor shall the Arabian pitch his tent there,
Nor shall shepherds make their folds there.
But there shall the wild beasts of the desert lodge,
And howling monsters shall fill their houses ;
And ostriches shall dwell there,
And satyrs shall dance there.
Wolves shall howl in their palaces,
And jackals in their pleasant edifices." — xiii. 17-22.
But history refutes this. In the course of long ages,
Babylon has sunk to ruin, as all great cities will, and'
as it needed no superhuman wisdom to foretell ; but
two hundred years after its capture by Cyrus, in Al
exander's time, it was still a magnificent city, and
after Alexander's time it still stood, a splendid capi
tal of the princes of the line of the Seleucidae.*
* See also xiii. 10- 16 ; xiv. 2. Does history justify the interpretation of
these verses as supernatural predictions? — Comp. Cleric. "Art. Crit.,"
Tom. I. pp. 170, 171.

204 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
4. It is further remarkable, in connection with the
received hypothesis, that, along with this supposed
prediction of the capture of Nebuchadnezzar's capital
by Cyrus, no mention whatever occurs of the previous
conquest of Judea, and transportation thither of its
inhabitants, by the Babylonian monarch, — transac
tions which, if Isaiah were writing by supernatural
foreknowledge, might be supposed to have a predomi
nating interest for his mind.
It would be superfluous to remark on (what cannot
escape any reader of intelligence and taste) the rich
ness and beauty of the poetical imagery in this pas
sage, particularly in that portion of it which depicts
the reception of the dead king of Babylon by the as
sembly of monarchs, who rise from their thrones in
the gloomy hall of the departed to reproach him as he
joins their mournful company.
The passage extending from the twenty-fourth verse
of the fourteenth chapter to the twenty-seventh, inclu
sive, is commonly understood to be a distinct fragment
relating to the Assyrian empire ; and it is so arranged
in the translations of De Wette, Gesenius, and Noyes.
But I prefer, with Lowth and Doederlein, to connect it
with what precedes, of which it seems a natural se
quence, and from which it is not disconnected by any
break ; on the contrary, the same form of language is
continued, in declarations of what " Jehovah of hosts "
hath " said " and " sworn." And thus regarded, I re
mark that it facilitates the interpretation of what goes
before, showing the reference to " Babylon '; to be less
specific than is commonly imagined. It is not improb
able, that, in Isaiah's time, Babylon, even before the
overthrow by Esarhaddon of its separate government,
was already, in some sort, an appendage of the wide
spread Assyrian empire ; a great satrapy, more or less

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. - XXXIX. 8. 205
dependent or independent on the nominal metropolis,
as circumstances from time to time gave advantage to
the central or the secondary powei;, — as the provinces
of Persia and of Macedon were of old, and as the pa-
chalics of Turkey have been in recent times. Now As
syria, at least, had sustained the most important rela
tions to Judea as early as Isaiah's time,* and if the
whole passage is to be regarded as one, without a divis
ion after the twenty-third verse, then it is an irruption
of the Assyrian arms which is referred to throughout ;
and it follows that Babylon was not threatened as the
centre of that great power under which the Jewish
realm afterwards was actually crushed (as the common
interpretation requires to be understood), but as one
of the great cities of that vast Assyrian empire, from
which Judea had already suffered such heavy calami
ties, and the city most exposed, from its geographical
position, to an invasion from Persia and the contigu
ous territory of the Medes. On this supposition, Shal-
maneser, Sennacherib, or Esarhaddon, kings of As
syria, according as the passage was written earlier or
later, may have been the prince whom it intended to
designate as " king of Babylon." f
The next passage, which consists of the last four
verses of the fourteenth chapter, and appears to be
complete in itself, is dated, in its inscription, "in the
year in which Ahaz the king died." The writer ad
monishes the Philistines against exulting because
the rod that smote them was broken, and tells them
that the successors of the departed conqueror should
visit them with still heavier calamities ; while, under
the safe guardianship of their rulers and their god,
the poorest citizens of Israel should enjoy repose and

* 2 Kings xv. 29 ; xvi. 7. f Is- x'-v- 4-
VOL. III. 18

206 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
plenty. The design of the poem very probably was to
commemorate the victories of Hezekiah over the Phi
listines.* But the inscription, which appears intended
to represent Ahaz as " the rod " that had smitten Phi-
listia, is probably erroneous. It is more likely that
in that expression the writer had in view the grand
father of Ahaz, Uzziah„ who really was a scourge to
that people,-]- while the history represents them, on
the contrary, as having had, in the time of Ahaz, al
together the best of the war.J
The fifteenth and sixteenth chapters constitute a
single poem, denouncing, or commemorating, great re
verses of the Moabites, without mentioning the hostile
power concerned in their infliction.
To what series of events reference is here made, is
a question. Moab was still a power of some considera
tion a hundred years later than Isaiah's time, in the
age of Jeremiah, who wrote against it in close imita
tion of the earlier composition. § Indeed, some critics
of note are of the opinion that the two are but differ
ent editions of the same Writing, of which Jeremiah
may have been the author. || On the other hand, we
read at the close of the passage as follows : —
" This is the word, which Jehovah spake concerning
Moab of old. But now, saith Jehovah ;
Within three years, like the years of a hireling,
The glory of Moab shall be put to shame,
With all his great multitude ;
The remnant shall be very small, and without strength." — xvi. 13, 14.
And this has given rise to an opinion, entertained by

* 2 Kings xviii. 8. f 2 Chron. xxvi. 6, 7.
X 2 Chron. xxviii. 18. § 'Jer. xlviii.
|| As Rosenmiiller, Koppe, and Eichhorn. Bertholdt (" Einleitung,"
§ 363) inclines to that opinion, and at all events thinks that the work must
be referred to the period of the exile.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. -XXXIX. 8. 207
Knobel (who refers the piece to Jonah),* and by oth
ers, that it was the production of some writer more
ancient than Isaiah, who adopted it, and, at the time
when he saw the hosts of Shalmaneser pouring west
ward through Moab towards Judea, declared, in
the verses just quoted, that it was now about to re
ceive its fulfilment. Gesenius, putting a similar con
struction on the last clause, ascribes the passage to
some writer contemporary with Isaiah, or somewhat
earlier, who thought he saw reason to believe that
Moab was soon to fall, as other neighbouring nations
had done, under the Assyrian arms.-)- I would, how
ever, propose a different view. To me it seems more
probable that it was written by Isaiah at the time
of the Assyrian irruption of Tiglath-Pileser in the
reign of Uzziah, J or of Shalmaneser or Sennacherib
in the succeeding reigns, § and that the note, " This is
the word which Jehovah spake concerning Moab of
old," &c, was added by some person who, at the la
ter period of the conquest of Moab by Nebuchadnez
zar, || supposed that to be the event which the an
cient prophet had had in mind. The expression
" three years " is not to be understood as an exact
specification of time, but as one of those round num
bers, which the Scriptural writers, like others, so fre
quently employ.^}
In the Second Book of Kings ** we read that Pe
kah, king of Israel, formed an alliance with Rezin,

* "Der Prophet Jesaia," p. 107. Comp. 2 Kings xiv. 25.
f " Cotnmentar uber den Jesaia," Th. II. s. 508, u. s. f.
X 2 Kings xv. 29.
§ 2 Kings xvii. 3 ; xviii. 13.
|| 2 Kings xxiv. 1, 2.
If Comp. 1 Kings x. 22 ; Luke xiii. 32.
** 2 Kings xvi. 5-9.

208 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
king of Syria, for the invasion of the southern king
dom, then ruled by Ahaz ; and that to oppose them
that monarch called in the aid of the Assyrians, who
accordingly invaded Syria, took its capital city, Da
mascus, put its king to death, and, in the sequel,
overran the territory of Israel, and carried away its
people captive. All this took place in the time of
Isaiah, and to this series of transactions, without doubt,
the passage in the seventeenth chapter of his proph
ecy, extending through the first eleven verses, relates,.
The prophet refers to contemporaneous events; he
.commemorates the calamities of Israel as well as of
Syria; ascribes the former to the nation's having
" forgotten the God of its salvation " ; and expresses
the conviction that, in their distress, they will again
perforce " have regard " to him whom they disregarded
in their prosperity and pride. There is no supernat
ural prediction here. In the vivid mode of expres
sion which belongs to poetry, Isaiah says, —
'* Behold, Damascus shall be no more a city;
It shall become a heap of ruins." — xvii. 1.
There is no age of subsequent history that does not
contradict the interpretation which would find in
the words a pretension to miraculous foreknowledge.
Yet they contain as strong a representation, for its ex
tent, as those made concerning Babylon and Tyre, in
the pictures of whose desolation the commentators
take so much injudicious delight.*
The last three verses of the chapter I understand to
begin another passage, belonging to a later period in
the life of Isaiah, and relating to the boastfulness, in
* For the bold and worthless way in which this subject of the conquests
of Babylon and Tyre has been treated in connection with the prophetical
poems, see, inslar omnium, Bishop Newton's " Dissertations on the Proph
ecies," Diss. X. and XI.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1.- XXXIX. 8. 209
the first place, and the disaster, in the second, of Sen
nacherib's army before Jerusalem, recorded in the
Second Book of Kings* The remainder of the pas
sage, to the end of the eighteenth chapter, expresses
the hope naturally entertained at this juncture by the
writer, in common with the rest of his nation, that
they would find protection against any further de
signs of Sennacherib in the promised assistance of
" Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia."-j- He expresses a con
fidence that Jehovah will effectually defend his chosen
race through the instrumentality of that friendly
power, and that, when they shall have witnessed his
interposition in their behalf, they will end by bringing
gifts and worship to his temple.J
To what period or circumstances of the intercourse
between Judea and Egypt in Isaiah's time the com
position of the nineteenth chapter is to be referred,
there is nothing absolutely to determine. Jehovah is
represented as riding to Egypt upon a swift cloud, and
striking consternation into her people and her gods.
The writer threatens them with the calamities of for
eign and intestine war, of the oppression of a fierce
tyrant, of drought, famine, disease, stupidity of mind,
and every form of impotence and misery. The conse
quence, he says, will be, that the Egyptians will first
be smitten with terror ; that then the worship of Je
hovah will be introduced among them ; that he will
raise them up a deliverer ; and that a threefold alli
ance between themselves, the Assyrians, and the Jews
will complete and establish their prosperous condition.

* 2 Kings xviii. 13 -xix. 36.
f Comp. 2 Kings xix. 9.
X In the poetical imagery in the fifth and sixth verses, the prophet recurs
to the destruction of the Assyrian host ; " the fruit was cut down when full
swoln, and left to be trampled on the ground."
18*

210 ISAIAH XIII. 1  XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
" In that day shall there be a highway from Egypt to Assyria,
And the Assyrian shall come into Egypt,
And the Egyptian into Assyria,
And the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians.
In that day shall Israel be the third
In a covenant with Egypt and Assyria,
A blessing in the midst of the earth.
Jehovah of hosts shall bless them, and say,
Blessed be Egypt, my people,
And Assyria, the work of my hands,
And Israel, my inheritance." — xix. 23-25.
The whole appears to be but the eloquent expression
of a hope indulged at some sanguine moment by the
writer, that the great Egyptian people would be
brought to see their religious and social sins by force
of the misfortunes which these had already shown a
tendency, or at least might naturally be; expected, to
bring about ; that it would abandon its idols and nec
romancers for the service of the true God ; and that,
in the more upright and peaceable spirit of its new
faith, it would enter into friendly relations with As
syria, with which it had hitherto waged such bloody
wars, and enjoy permanent peace with that nation,
and with Judea, whose territory the hosts of the rival
powers had been used to make their battle-field.
In the twentieth chapter, on the other hand, writ
ten not improbably at an early period of the relations
of Judah with Assyria, when its friendship was
thought a desirable security against invasion from the
northern frontier, the writer shows himself indisposed
to an alliance with its rivals, the Egyptians and Ethi
opians. He declares his judgment that such an alli
ance could only end in disappointment and shame, for
the king of Assyria would prove too powerful for
those nations to stand against him. Of the poetical
form of representation in which the writer is said to
have given a symbolical expression to his thought by

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1.- XXXIX. 8. 211
going about naked and barefoot three years, I have
already treated sufficiently at length in another place.*
The Assyrian general Tartan, mentioned in the first
verse, was probably the same of whom we read
in the Book of Kings as associated with others in the
command of the forces before Jerusalem in the time
of Hezekiah.-j" But we have no knowledge, from any
other source, of his being sent on an expedition against
the Philistine city of Ashdod ; and accordingly the
mention of that fact affords no aid in determining the
date and occasion of the composition.
The inscription to the first ten verses of the twenty-
first chapter declares them to relate to " the desert of
the sea," an appellation which might well be used to
designate Babylon, surrounded as its site was by lakes
and marshes. The passage is commonly understood,
like that in the thirteenth chapter, as a prediction,
some two hundred years beforehand, of the capture of
that city by the Medes and Persians under Cyrus. Its
authenticity, as a work of Isaiah, is subject to the
same suspicion, and by many modern critics its com
position is dated during, or immediately after, the
siege which ended in that catastrophe. But suppos
ing, in the absence of any external, or of any cogent
internal proof, one way or the other, that it ought to
be ascribed to Isaiah, the proof of the writer's having
had any supernatural foreknowledge of the events
which he is understood to be describing is altogether
defective, notwithstanding the stress laid by the com
mentators on two or three particulars in the represen
tation. $

* See Vol. II. pp. 418-425. f 2 Kings xviii. 17.
X The Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions exhibit texts of the
second verse, which, while they differ from each other, all do away the force
of the argument drawn from that verse (the key to the whole of the com
mon interpretation) as it now stands in our Hebrew copies.

212 ISAIAH XIII. l.-XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
According to the received text, he appears to speak
of the Medes and Persians as the conquerors of Baby
lon ; and so they actually became, in the year 538 B. C.
But it is very bold criticism to assume that a writer
long before might not, on common grounds of hu
man observation, have expected such an event, and ex
pected it to occur long before it did in fact. There is
many a nation at the present day which we should be
perfectly safe in declaring would at some time yield to
the victorious arms of some neighbouring kingdom, if
we did not, as this writer did not, undertake to fix the
date, but allowed the range of all future time for the
accomplishment of the expectation. And particularly
there is no improbability in supposing the writer's
idea to have been, that the great empire of Assyria
would, by means of the Persians and Medes, its tribu
taries, wreak its displeasure upon Babylon ; * but if
that was his sense, it was not fulfilled in the expedi
tion of Cyrus.
The writer, again, appears to declare that Babylon
would be taken while its nobles were engaged in care
less festivity ; and under these circumstances it was
actually taken by Cyrus. But there is nothing so ex
traordinary in a representation of this kind, on the one
hand, or of its coincidence with the event, on the
other, as to make it necessary or judicious to resort to
a supposition of supernatural foreknowledge in order
to solve the riddle. As to the language, the contrast
of wanton security and revel at one moment with sur
prise and ruin in the next is one suitable, not only to
poetry, but to less adventurous forms of speech ; f and
as to the fact, such is precisely the advantage which a

* Comp. Is. xxiii. 13.
f Comp. Is. xxii. 12, 13 ; Matt. xxiv. 38 ; Luke xxi. 34.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. - XXXIX. 8. 213
besieging army, guided by its spies, would seize ; and
under such circumstances many a city besides Babylon
has fallen, before and since*
In the hopeless obscurity which rests upon the
fragment concerning Idumaea in the eleventh and
twelfth verses, the suggestion of Doederlein, which he
offers merely as a conjecture, may appear as probable
as any. It is to this effect. The prophet hears a
shout from Mount Seir, distressed by invading ene
mies, and inquiring when its night of suffering is to
cease; and he replies, that, while for other afflicted
nations he is able to discern another dawning of pros
perity, of Edom he has nothing to say. The ques
tioner must seek information elsewhere.
The inscription to the next passage, which con
cludes the chapter, is, I conceive, erroneous. It is
not, as I interpret it, an " oracle against the Arabi
ans," but concerning them ; it is a declaration that, in
the Arabian solitudes, the fugitives from Dedan and
Kedar, destined to be speedily expelled from their
homes by a bloodthirsty enemy, shall find a hospita
ble refuge. Both these places, probably more than
one called by each name, are elsewhere mentioned in
Scripture, but in no connection which enables us to
determine their position ; f and for want of materials
it is in vain to inquire concerning the occasion of the
flight here referred to.
By the " valley of vision," mentioned in the inscrip
tion at the beginning of the next chapter, is com-
* Michaelis has endeavoured to turn the altogether vague language in the
seventh verse to use in this argument, but though his criticism is approved
by Eichhorn (" Einleitung in das A. T.," Th. III. $ 525), I do not sup
pose that it would find favor with any judicious commentator of the present
day. f Jer. xlix. 8 ; Ezek. xxv. 13 ; xxvii. 15 ; Ps. cxx. 5 ; Is. xiii. 11 ; lx.
7 ; Jer. ii. 10 ; xlix. 28 ; Ezek. xxvii. 21.

214 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
monly, and no doubt correctly, understood Jerusa
lem, the place whence the prophets looked out on the
movements of the world's events, or whence they pub
lished their observations. The passage fixes its date,
if I interpret it rightly, at the time of the siege of Je
rusalem by Sennacherib's army.* The prophet expos
tulates with his fellow-citizens for their cowardice.
They who were of late so joyous and boastful " fall
not by the sword " ; " they are not slain in battle " ;
but they prefer, he says, to flee from the city, at the
risk of falling into the enemy's hands, or to skulk
within its walls, and die upon its housetops of fam-
ine.-j- The sight of the public calamity is so grievous,
that he refuses to be comforted. He sees the idola
trous foe, with Elam and Kir among its tributary le
gions, assailing the walls, and filling the surrounding
valley with his chariots and horsemen, f while the in
habitants, thoughtless of Jehovah, and in turn for
saken by him, give themselves up desperately to de
bauchery and mirth, or at best busy themselves in
hasty and unskilful preparations of defence. § The
prophet himself shares in the general despondency,
for, not anticipating that rout of the invading army
by which the city was to be so marvellously delivered,
he says, —
" Therefore it hath been revealed in my ears by Jehovah of hosts ;
' This iniquity shall not be expiated by you, till ye die ' ;
Saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts." — xxii. 14.
His indignation is particularly excited against one of
the high officers of the court, who, indulging a not
* 2 Kings xviii. 17, et seq. f Is. xxii. 1-3.
X xxii. 4-7. This occurrence of the name of Elam, or Persia, as a
nation known to Isaiah, is important in its connection with the observations
made above on chapters xiii. and xxi. See above, pp. 202, 212.
§ xxii. 8- 13. With verse 9 comp. 2 Chron. xxxii. 2, et seq. ; Is. vii. 3.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. 215
uncommon Oriental pride, had, perhaps with the gains
of official misconduct, been building himself a splen
did mausoleum. The prophet says that he must be
degraded from his state, and die in poverty in a foreign
land,* while of his worthier successor Jehovah de
clares, —
" I will clothe him with thy robe,
And strengthen him with thy girdle ;
Thy government will I commit to his hand,
And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
And to the house of Judah.
I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder ;
He shall open, and none shall shut,
And he shall shut, and none shall open." — xxii. 21, 22.f
The authenticity of the twenty-third chapter has
been called in question, and peculiarities of phraseol
ogy have been pointed out, indicating an age when the
Jews had more intercourse with neighbouring nations
than can be supposed to have existed in Isaiah's time. J
The subject of the passage is a denunciation of cap
ture and ruin against the great Phoenician city, Tyre ;
and, taking the clew of their interpretation from the
thirteenth verse, in which mention is made of Baby
lon, the commentators who have ascribed the poem to
Isaiah have understood it as predicting the capture of
the city by Nebuchadnezzar some century and a half
after the writer's time ; which capture, however, is it
self an event not known from history to have ever
taken place. But, either supposing it to be a produc
tion of Isaiah (which I consider not improbable), or
* xxii. 15-19, 25.
¦j- Shebna and Eliakim are mentioned as courtiers of Hezekiah in 2 Kings
xviii. 18, 26; xix. 2. — If Eliakim (signifying "whom God hath appoint
ed") had not been so expressly described by Isaiah as to his parentage,
how surely would the magnificent language applied to him have been urged
by the commentators as a remarkable prophecy of Christ !
X Comp. Eichhorn, " Einleitung," Th. III. § 525.

216 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
to have proceeded from any other source, I cannot ad
mit that there is good ground for such an interpreta
tion. The Hebrew text of that important verse is al
together too uncertain (the ancient versions represent
ing it very variously) to allow of its being the basis of
any argument. Lowth's translation of it is, —
" Behold the land of the Chaldeans ;
This people was of no account,
(The Assyrian founded it for the inhabitants of the desert,
They raised the watch-towers ; they set up the palaces thereof,)
This people hath reduced her. [Tyre] to a ruin."
But this is altogether arbitrary, and the critic himself
remarks, — " This verse is extremely obscure ; the ob
scurity arises from the ambiguity of the agents which
belong to the verbs, and of the objects expressed by
the pronouns ; from the change of number in the
verbs, and of gender in the pronouns." Even taking
the Hebrew as it stands, it quite as well admits of be
ing rendered as follows ; —
" Behold the land of the Chaldeans ;
This people was reduced to nothing ;
The Assyrians gave it over to the wild beasts for a dwelling ;
They erected their towers against it,
They stormed its palaces,
They made it a heap of rubbish,."
Adopting this natural version, the fancy of a predic
tion, generations before, of a Babylonian conquest of
Tyre is at once dispelled, and we understand the writ
er as referring to some severity exercised at some time
by the Assyrians on their Chaldean tributaries, and
warning the Tyrians to beware of a similar infliction
at the same hands.
If we ascribe the piece to Isaiah as its author, a
natural interpretation of it will be as follows. As the
prophet saw the Assyrian armies pouring westward,
towards the coast of the Mediterranean and the neigh-

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1.- XXXIX. 8. 217
bourhood of Tyre, he augured destruction to that
proud and prosperous city, the mart of Mediterranean
commerce from Egypt to Greece, and from Sidon to
Spain .* It is the fiat of Jehovah, he declares, that
her pride shall be brought low, and her impoverished
nobles be vagabonds through the earth. f But these
calamities shall not be perpetual. After a time (after
" seventy years," denoting, I conceive, according to
frequent Scriptural use, an indefinite period) Jeho
vah shall relent, and the prosperity of the city be re
newed. J And thenceforward it shall be devoted to
better uses. " Her gain and her hire shall be holy to Jehovah ;
It shall not be treasured, nor laid up in store,
But it shall be for them that dwell before Jehovah,
For abundant food, and for splendid clothing." — xxiii. 18.
It is true we do not know from history that Shal
maneser did take Tyre ; on the contrary, the inference
from the account preserved by Josephus from Menan
der is that he attempted it, but failed. § But neither
do we know, on the other hand, that it was afterwards
taken by Nebuchadnezzar, though the commentators,
having assumed the prediction, go on to assume the
completion also. || Nor do we know that Tyre was
* Is. xxiii. 1-7. f xxiii. 8 - 14.
X xxiii. 15- 17.
§ Comp. Joseph., "Antiq. Jud.," Lib. ix. cap. 14, $ 2.
|| For proof of the contrary, see Ezek. xxix. 18. Josephus says (" An
tiq. Jud.," Lib. x. cap. 11, § 1), that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre thirteen
years in the reign of its king Ithobal the Second, but he does not say that he
took it, while the passage of Ezekiel, just referred to, appears distinctly to
declare the contrary. Jerome mentions (" Opp.," Tom. III. p. 876, edit.
Mart.) that those who had examined the Greek and Phoenician historians for
the purpose declared that they found nothing of a capture of Tyre by Nebu
chadnezzar. He himself argues that it actually took place, but it was for
the reason tacitly assumed by more modern commentators. He believed the
prophets to have predicted it, and therefore he believed it to have occurred,
making the supposed prediction prove the event, and then adducing the
VOL. III. 19

218 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
revived after seventy years' calamity ; but, on the con
trary, this is an unmanageable particular of the re
ceived exposition, for there was but about half that
time between the supposed capture of the city by Nebu
chadnezzar and the period when we read of its hav
ing been distinguished by the favor of Cyrus.* Nor
is it possible, on any supposition, to point to a time
when the gains of Tyrian traffic have become conse
crated offerings " for them that dwell before Jehovah,"
" for abundant food, and for splendid clothing." These
particulars were not meant for predictions ; they have
not been fulfilled as such.
By all the commentators with whom I am acquaint
ed, alike those who affirm and those who deny the au
thenticity (as a work of Isaiah) of the passage con
sisting of the twenty-fourth and the three following
chapters,-)" the land therein spoken of as conquered,
" made empty and waste," " turned upside down," and
despoiled of its inhabitants, is understood to be the
land of Judah, the southern kingdom, which did undergo

event to confirm the prediction. See the valuable notes of Gesenius on
this subject, " Jesaias," Th. II. ss. 711 u. s. w. How profound must be the
dulness of English Scriptural criticism, when such a mind as Lowth's could
be content with such a style of reasoning !
* Ezra iii. 7.
t Says Jahn (" Einleitung in das A. T.," Th. II. $ 101) , — " The difficult
section in chapters 24-27 is applied by Grotius to Shalmaneser, by Hensler
to Sennacherib, by Dathe to Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction of Baby
lon, and by Vitringa to the Maccabees ; it corresponds best with the devasta
tions of Nebuchadnezzar and the fall of Babylon, and probably it glances oc
casionally at the times of the Maccabees." This sentence is no bad illustra
tion of the common principle of interpreting the prophecies, by a writer
who himself adopts it. Expressed in plain language, it would be, " Pick
out passages here and there, separated from their context ; call them predic
tions ; date their origin ad libitum ; make them refer to any thing in history,
which bears to them more or less resemblance, or to several such things
at the same time ; and you have the proof that to their author was imparted
that great attribute of the Divinity, to know the end from the beginning."

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1  XXXIX. 8. 219
that fate long after the time of Isaiah, in the success
ful inroad of Nebuchadnezzar. And the exposition of
the whole has been made to proceed upon that basis.
I conceive it to be altogether erroneous. I conceive
that Isaiah is to be understood as speaking of what
had taken place before his eyes in the sister kingdom ;
the conquest of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians.*
There is no mention of the Babylonians throughout.
There is not a word which does not apply at least
equally well to the Israelitish captivity. There is a
remarkable parallelism between the reasons alleged by
the prophet for the national disaster which he depicts,
and those assigned by the historian for the captivity of
Israel.^ And Assyria is even expressly mentioned as
having received the exiles. J
Briefly, then, I understand the whole passage as fol
lows. Moved by a mournful fellow-feeling for the
misfortunes of his brethren of the northern tribes, yet
not unmindful that their sins had provoked their fate,
he utters his mingled lamentations both over the effect
and the cause. § But, reasoning and feeling like one
of the chosen race, || he did not believe that the Is
raelitish impiety and blindness, or the Divine displeas
ure, would endure for ever. He trusted that calamity
would do its proper work upon them in bringing them
to repentance ; and that then their reconciled God, he

* 2 Kings xvii. 6-23.
f Comp. Is. xxiv. 1 - 12, with the passage of 2 Kings just referred to.
J Is. xxvii. 13. The exiles of the time had gone to Assyria ; outcasts or
fugitives had found their way to Egypt.
§ xxiv. 1-20. — By " these " who " shall lift up their voice," &c. (14),
I understand Isaiah's fellow-citizens of the southern kingdom. No stress can
be laid on the expressions " the sea " and " the fires " (15) ; the text is un
certain ; and different ancient versions either omit the words, or render
them variously.
|| See Vol. II. p. 381.

220 ISAIAH XIII. 1.— XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
who still "reigned in Mount Zion and Jerusalem,"
though no more worshipped in Samaria, would wreak
his vengeance on their tyrants* Animated by this
hope, he goes on, in a hymn of thanksgiving, to praise
God to whom he looks to accomplish it,j" and to en
large upon the glories of that coming age when the
mercies reserved for Jerusalem from ancient times shall
be fully disclosed, — when, ruling over the reunited
race on his chosen mountain of Zion, he shall lavish
on them prosperity and honor, make them the benefac
tors and enlighteners of distant nations, and visit sig
nal vengeance on their enemies. $ The grateful peo
ple, he says, assembled once more, in both its branch
es, in the land of Judah, shall from the " strong city "
of Jerusalem break out into songs of praise and tri
umph to God, their deliverer and patron, the ever-
ready and sufficient friend of the good, the guide of
" the upright " in " a smooth way," the punisher of
the proud and perverse, the propitious hearer of the
penitent. § Stand aside, he says, to his own fellow-
citizens, while these sorrows are falling on your ill-
fated countrymen ; be patient, and look cheerfully for
such a happy event of these calamities. || Be assured
that God will thus execute merited vengeance on all
oppressors, and give protection and peace and fertility
to his vineyard. ^[ Israel, carried away, as it has been,
" in the rough tempest, in the day of the east wind "
from Assyria, shall with sound of trumpet recall its
exiles from that kingdom, and its fugitives from the
land of Pharaoh, where they had found a refuge from
the pursuing hosts, collecting its sons " from the chan
nel of the Euphrates to the river of Egypt." Israel,

* Is. xxiv. 21-23. t xxv. 1-5. J xxv. 6-12.
§ xxvi. 1-19. || xxvi. 20,21. ^ xxvii. 1-5.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. -XXXIX. 8. 221
sufficiently chastised for its sins, shall sit down
once more in peace in the old home of the patriarchs
with her sister tribe, and both together, Judah and
Ephraim, so long parted, shall again " worship Jeho
vah upon the holy mountain in Jerusalem." *
The beginning of the twenty-eighth chapter clearly
relates to the same subject which I understand to be
treated in the preceding passage ; namely, the Assyrian
conquest of the northern kingdom. But while the
writer says, " the proud crown of the drunkards of
Ephraim " is thus " trodden under foot," " Jehovah of
hosts shall be a glorious crown and a beautiful dia
dem to the residue of his people," that is, to Isaiah's
own more faithful nation, Judah. f But even the peo
ple of Judah are far from being uncorrupted by the
intoxicating and brutal folly that has ruined Ephraim.
They are impatient and fretful under the admonitions
and invitations which their God has addressed to them
in his word and providence, and they venture to prom
ise themselves that no harm can come to them such as
has befallen their fellows. £ Let them be warned in
time, or their inadequate objects of reliance and their
cherished delusions of security shall soon be violently
swept away. Let them be no longer scoffers, or Je
hovah of hosts, who has laid deep a corner-stone of
justice, and will try all things by the line and plum
met of equity, will soon execute " destruction and
punishment " upon " the whole land," similar to what
he has already executed upon part. § Like the hus
bandman, whom he himself instructs, Jehovah, " won
derful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom," has been
but making preparation for a harvest, which will at

* Is. xxvii. 6 - 13. f xxviii. 1-6.
X xxviii. 7-13. § xxviii. 14 - 22.
19*

222 ISAIAH XIII. 1.— XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
length be ripened and gathered ; a harvest of careful
and sure retribution both to his friends and foes.*
In the twenty-ninth chapter, the prophet, again re
minding his countrymen of the deliverance which,
when in extreme danger and depression, God had
marvellously granted them from the invading hosts of
Sennacherib,-|" proceeds to condemn their continued
blindness to his will, and insensibility to his goodness,
and to warn them that, unless a better spirit be cher
ished, they shall yet experience his displeasure in the
troubles to be brought upon them by the stupid, hy
pocritical, and wanton folly of those guides in whom
they trust as wise and prudent. $ But better things
are to be hoped for. With such privileges it cannot
be feared that the people will continue so intracta
ble. A complete revolution of sentiment and charac
ter, it is to be trusted, will take place. And then
God, who waits to be gracious, will abundantly bless
his penitent people. When the deaf hear his lessons,
and the mist and darkness are cleared away from the
eyes of the blind, — when, through the disappearance
of the oppressor and the scoffer, and them " that were
watchful for iniquity," " the afflicted shall exceedingly
rejoice," and " the poor shall exult in the Holy One of
Israel," — when " they that were of a perverse spirit
shall learn wisdom, and the obstinate shall receive in
struction," — then their offended God will be fully rec
onciled, and "Jacob shall no more be ashamed; no
more shall his face grow pale." §

* Is. xxviii. 23-29.
f xxix. 1-8. — "Woe to Ariel," &c. (1); the context shows Jeru
salem to be meant ; the word Ariel means, by its etymology, " the lion of
God." X xxix. 9-16.
§ xxix. 17-24. — I suppose that those commentators are right who in-

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1.— XXXIX. 8. 223
We trace, in several portions of this book, the root
ed aversion of Isaiah to the plan of a portion of the
people to seek protection against the Assyrians in an
alliance with Egypt .* That policy, he says in the
thirtieth chapter, is one which Jehovah sternly disap
proves. From the undertaking to execute such a pro
ject, they will reap only disappointment and shame.
It is in vain that they send embassies of entreaty, and
troops laden with presents to that fierce and barbar
ous country. Egypt is but a blusterer, that will boast
and then flinch ; that will promise and betray. "f He
desires that this testimony of his to the folly of the
partisans of Egypt, and the frailty of their depend
ence, may be recorded, so that the future may bear
witness to its truth. Jehovah himself gives them
warning, that the object of their reliance will prove a
tumbling wall, and a fragile potter's vessel. $ The
human protection they vainly seek will but draw on
them a more utter ruin. Their true security is in
quiet and patient reliance on their heavenly Guardian. §
Let them seek him in penitent sincerity, and it will
not be in vain. He will give them guidance and de
liverance. || Let them renounce their idols and their
sins, and he will straightway visit them with signal
prosperity.^ " Then shall the light of the moon be as the light of the sun,
And the light of the sun shall be sevenfold,
As the light of seven days.
When Jehovah bindeth up the bruises of his people,
And healeth the wounds which have been inflicted on them." — xxx. 26.
terpret the words " Lebanon, &c," in the seventeenth verse, as a figurative
proverbial expression, generally significant. of a great revolution, whether
physical, political, moral, or of any other kind. In this instance the revo
lution indicated is moral.
* Comp. 2 Kings xviii. 21. ] Is. xxx. 1-7. J xxx. 8 - 14.
§ xxx. 15-18. || xxx. 19-21. ^ xxx. 22-25.

224 ISAIAH XIII. 1.- XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
And the majestic visitations of God's vengeance on
their enemies shall wake their own loud shouts and
songs of triumph .*
The thirty-first chapter pursues the same subject,
and in the same strain. It is infatuation to trust in
the feeble forces of Egypt. Its many horses and char
iots are a slender reed to lean upon. Assyria is
stronger than Egypt, but Jehovah is stronger than
Assyria. He can no more be daunted by the hosts of
his people's enemies, than a raging lion will tremble
at the outcries of a group of panic-stricken shepherds.
He will defend Jerusalem with the tenderness of a
bird hovering over its brood.f He has lighted a con
suming fire on Mount Zion. He feeds a devouring
furnace in Jerusalem. And if his people will but
turn to him from whom they " have so deeply revolt
ed," he will give them a memorable rescue from their
impotent human foes. Their invader, in the delirium
of his hurried flight, shall rush by his own strong
holds, and his officers shall forsake their standards. $
" The Assyrian shall fall by a sword, not of man,
Yea, a sword, not of mortal, shall devour him ;
He shall flee before the sword,
And his young men shall be slaves." — xxxi. 8.
The thirty-second chapter is, I think, best inter
preted as part of the same composition with the pre
ceding. When God shall have wrought this great
deliverance, says Isaiah, and put his people at rest
from their foreign enemies, it is to be expected that,
sobered at once by affliction, and touched by a sense of
unmerited mercy, their hearts will turn in sincerity to
their benefactor ; that rulers will rule in righteousness,
and subjects, awakened to a new sense of their obli-
* Is. xxx. 27 - 33. t xxxi- 1-5.
J xxxi. 6-9. With 9, comp. iv. 5.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. 225
gations, and taught better to discriminate the right
and the true, will lead quiet and peaceable lives in all
godliness and honesty .* But the women must be
warned, whose thoughtless follies have infected the
people. Unless they be reformed, all will still be des
olation. Even the vintages and the harvests before
long will fail, and thorns and briers cover the land,
and spring up even in the splendid city habitations.-^
" The palaces shall be forsaken ;
The tumult of the city shall be solitary ;
The fortified hill and the tower shall be dens for ever ;
The joy of wild-asses, the pasture of flocks." — xxxii. 14.
But when " the spirit is poured out from on high,"
and the hoped for reformation has taken place, —
" Then shall my people dwell in peaceful habitations,
In secure dwellings, in quiet resting-places." — xxxii. 18.
Happy they who shall sow their fields in quiet, and
send forth their herds to graze, while hailstorms shall
prostrate the forests beyond, and the proud city of
their oppressors be levelled with the ground. J
In all this language of blessing and of ban, who
does not see the luxuriant imagery of the patriotic
poet, instead of the precise representations of the lit
eral prognosticator X
The thirty-third chapter repeats the 'exultation over
the rout of the Assyrian invader, and the assurances
to Judah that, as in the late remarkable interposition,
so always, its true safety will be found in pious reli
ance on the Lord of hosts. — Woe to the Assyrian ma-
* Is. xxxii. 1-8. — With 3, 4, comp. xxix. 18, 24; xxx. 20. — Doe
derlein, I think, brings out the sense well by throwing into a parenthesis the
words in 6- 8 : " (By the knave I mean him who utters and contrives injus
tice," &c.)
f xxxii. 9-13. Comp. iii. 16 et seq.
X xxxii. 15-20. — In 15 we have the same figurative language used to
denote a moral reformation as in xxix. 17 ; vide supra, p. 222, note §.

226 ISAIAH XIII. 1.- XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
rauder, who at length is suddenly and utterly spoiled
himself, whose hosts, at the voice of that God in
whom Judah trusted, are scattered like a mist, whose
ill-gotten booty is now gathered, as by an army of lo
custs, by the lately straitened and quaking people,
whose only security was Divine " wisdom and knowl
edge," whose only treasure " the fear of Jehovah." *
How desperate of late seemed the condition of that
people! Its despised ambassadors joined tears with
their supplications to the proud invader, and no trav
eller ventured along its highways. Heedless of en
treaty, and mocking at past engagements, the con
queror pressed along his desolating way, and the land
where he trod mourned and languished ; the verdure
withered and dropped off, and he left a wilderness be
hind him. But " Now will I arise, saith Jehovah ;
Now will I exalt myself;
Now will I lift myself up." — xxxiii. 10.
Pie arose, and the pride and power of Assyria were
swept away like stubble by the wind, and consumed
as lime and thorn-faggots are burned in a kiln. Dis
tant nations were smitten with awe of his power, and
they who had been distrustful and disobedient in the
now rescued city were overwhelmed with consterna-
tion.f And that which is past is the same that ever
shall be. Jehovah will never be unmindful of the
good, nor cease to compassionate his people. The
man who is righteous in deed, word, and thought has
the surest of all defences, for he has made the Omnip
otent his guardian.
" He shall dwell on high ;
The strongholds of rocks shall be his defence ;
* Is. xxxiii. 1-6. f xxxiii. 7- 14 ; comp. 2 Kings xviii. 14 et seq.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. 227
His bread shall be given him ;
His water shall not fail." — xxxiii. 16.
Secure from all encroachment and free from all solici
tude, he shall gratefully contemplate present prosper
ity, and meditate on past alarms, and rejoice in the
quiet and immovable stability of " Zion, the city of
the solemn feasts." While the disabled enemy shall
drift away like a dismasted ship, in Jerusalem all shall
be health, vigor, and tranquillity.*
" For Jehovah is our judge ; Jehovah is our lawgiver ;
Jehovah is our king; he will save us." — xxxiii. 22.
Many of the German commentators deny the authen
ticity of the poem or poems in the thirty-fourth and
thirty-fifth chapters of this book ; but I cannot attach
much importance to the considerations which lead
them to that conclusion. De Wette urges the resem
blance of the passage to writings of the time of the
Babylonish captivity.-)" But we shall see, when we
come to the examination of those writings, that they
often present studied imitations of those of an earlier
age ; and in all times it is quite as common, at least, to
imitate ancients as contemporaries. Knobel argues
that the extreme hatred of the Edomites which this
passage expresses was a sentiment belonging rather to
the period of the wars of Nebuchadnezzar; but, on
the contrary, the whole succession of Scriptures exhib
its abundant traces that it was an hereditary feeling of
the Jews from the age of Moses down. J Gesenius
lays stress on the promise of a " return " of " the ran
somed of Jehovah," § which supposes "a previous cap-
* Is. xxxiii. 15-24.
¦f " Lehrbuch," &c, §209. — Comp. Jer. xlix.7etseq; Ezek. xxv. 12 el seq.
X "Jesaia," ad loc. — Comp. Numb. xx. 14-21 ; 1 Sam. xiv. 47; 2 Sam.
viii. 14 ; 1 Kings xi. 14-22 ; Ps. Ix. 8, 9 ; cviii. 9, 10, el mult. h. m.
§ Is. xxxv. 10.

228 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
tivity and exile.* But herein, I conceive, is implied
an error which has to a great extent confused and ob
scured the interpretation of the prophecies. When
ever a " captivity " is spoken of or referred to in the
Jewish poetical books, it has been altogether too easily
assumed that that captivity must be meant which to
us is of the greatest historical importance ; namely,
that which took place at the time of the Babylonian
conquest. But not to name other partial calamities of
the kind, which the context sometimes indicates,-]" the
captivity of the ten northern tribes took place in
Isaiah's own time, and, though, to an inhabitant of the
southern kingdom, not an event of equal interest with
that in which his own holy city and country were con
cerned, it was an event only secondary to that in in
terest, and even to him an event unsurpassed in inter
est till the latter had occurred. Certainly, with this
fact before us, it is altogether unsafe and groundless
to assume, that, whenever a captivity is referred to,
and a release and restoration are anticipated, it must
be the captivity of the two tribes that the writer has
in view-
I suppose that the devastation with which Edom is
threatened was understood by the writer to await it
at the hands of Assyria or Egypt, J of which two
great nations Idumaea was probably for some time the

* " Commentar," Th. II. s. 908. — I think it is at least very doubtful
whether the two chapters do not constitute two distinct poems. If so, this
argument, better or worse, applies only to the latter chapter.
f 2 Chron. xxviii. 11, 17 ; xxxiii. 11.
X The conquest of Idumaea by Nebuchadnezzar, to which this passage is
considered by the generality of commentators to relate, is an event assumed
altogether without historical authority. Josephus, who has been carelessly
supposed to assert it (" Antiq.," Lib. x. cap. 9, § 7), says nothing of the
kind. He says that Nebuchadnezzar reduced Egypt, Ammon, and Moab ;
but he says nothing of Idumaea.

XLV] ISAIAH XIII. 1.- XXXIX. 8. 229
battle-ground, at the period of the Assyrian invasion in
Hezekiah's reign. That, at this time, the Edomites had
grossly injured and offended the Jews, appears from
the prophecy of Amos, Isaiah's contemporary* That
the king of Judah solicited aid from Assyria against
the Edomites is related in the history ; f and it is very
natural to suppose that it was in the expectation of its
being effectually rendered, that this passage was com
posed. But its composition, as far as the denuncia
tion against Edom is concerned, is sufficiently ac
counted for by the fact that that country lay between
those of two powerful belligerents, and was involved
in their politics. The Jewish writer, with or without
some particular encouragement in the existing posture
of affairs, would naturally hope and threaten that the
ancient and obstinate enemy of his nation would meet
its doom through the success which would be given
to the arms of its enemies by his nation's Almighty
Avenger. £ The imagery employed to illustrate the
destruction of Edom resembles that used in the case of
Babylon, § except that it is partly derived from the
volcanic character of that portion of the territory of
Idumaea which lay in the vicinity of the Dead Sea ; as,
" Her streams shall be turned into pitch,
And her dust into brimstone,
And her whole land shall become burning pitch.
Day and night it shall not be quenched ;
Its smoke shall ascend for ever." — xxxiv. 9, 10.
That he was not pretending to write supernatural

* Amos i. 11, 12. t 2 Chron. xxviii. 16, 17.
X Is. xxxiv. 1-17. — The fall under the Assyrian arms of " all the na
tions" against whom "the wrath of Jehovah is kindled" (2) well agrees
with Rabshakeh's boast, " thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have
done to all lands, by destroying them utterly " (2 Kings xix. 11), and with
Hezekiah's confirmation of it (Ibid. 17).
§ Comp Is. xiii. 6 - 13 ; 19 - 22.
VOL. III. 20

230 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
prediction, or that, at all events, what he wrote was
not fulfilled as such, appears from the flourishing con
dition of Idumaea in the time of the Maccabees.*
But while Edom is doomed to such a perpetual des
olation, another destiny, says the prophet, awaits God's
chosen land. Distressed as for a season it may be,
he loves it still, and in his own good time, if devout
and patriotic hopes are to be trusted, he will signalize
his own greatness by making it a land of glorious fer
tility and beauty. Let the faint-hearted take encour
agement, for the nation's covenant-God will be its un
wearied benefactor. He will cause the morally blind
to see, the insensible and deaf to hear and under
stand; even the lame shall leap for joy, and the
dumb shall shout aloud his praises. Springs shall
burst- out in the sandy waste, and reeds and rushes
grow where were lately the holes of jackals. The
renovated country shall call back its exiles from their
scattered dwellings, and their Divine guide shall clear
the way, consecrate it to their use alone, and remove
from it every obstruction. They shall not only come
back to Judaea. The happiness shall be consummated
by their coming back to Zion. Israel, long estranged,
shall be reconciled to Judah, and both together real
ize, without limit or degree, the best prospect held out
to the tribes in their early age of union and hope, j-
" Yea, the ransomed of Jehovah shall return ;
They shall come to Zion with songs ;
Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads ;
They shall obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away." — xxxv. 10.
The passage consisting of the thirty-sixth and the
three following chapters contains a prose narrative'

* 1 Mac. v. 65. f Is. xxxv. 1- 10.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1.- XXXIX. 8. 231
and two poems. With a few exceptions, of little im
portance* the narrative and one of the poems are a
repetition, word for word, of the contents of part of the
Second Book of Kings."]" The question naturally oc
curs, whether the compiler of the Book of Isaiah took
the passage from the Book of Kings, or the author
of Kings from the Book of Isaiah (or rather that por
tion of it which was extant in his time), or whether
both borrowed from a comm'on source. Critics of note
have respectively given to the question the several
answers of which it admits. J I see no satisfactory
ground for replying to it confidently in either way.
But the probability appears to me to incline in favor
of the supposition, that the compiler of the Book of
Isaiah took the passage from that of Kings. That it
was composed later than the time of Isaiah would (in
dependently of other obvious considerations) seem a
safe inference from some of its phraseology ; § and the
same conclusion has been drawn from the fact that it
records || the death of Sennacherib, which, however,
may have taken place within Isaiah's lifetime.
* The principal are the following. After 2 Kings xviii. 13, the passage
in Isaiah omits three verses containing an account of an arrangement made
by Hezekiah with Sennacherib. It does not mention the colleagues of Rab-
shakeh (comp. 2 Kings xviii. 17). In Is. xxxvii. 17, 19, xxxviii. 4, 5, 7,
there are abbreviations of the language of the corresponding sentences in 2
Kings xviii. 32, 34, xix. 4-6, 9, 10. The verses Isaiah xxxviii. 21, 22
(comp. 2 Kings xx. 7, 8) are misplaced, as if the copyist had accidentally
omitted them, and on observing the error took this method of correcting it.
In Is. xxxvi. 5 (comp. 2 Kings xviii. 20) ; xxxvi. 21 (comp. 2 Kings
xviii. 36) ; xxxvii. 25 (comp. 2 Kings xix. 24) ; xxxvii. 38 (comp. 2 Kings
xix. 37), and other places, are immaterial verbal omissions or variations.
f Comp. 2 Kings xviii. 13 -xx. 19. — For an abridgment of this his
tory, see Ecclesiasticus xlviii. 17 - 25.
X As Gesenius and Eichhorn, the first answer ; Vitringa and Jahn, the
second; and Hitzig, Koppe, Bertholdt, and Knobel, the third.
§ On this point, see Gesenius, " Jesaia," Th. II. s. 934 ; Eichhorn, " Ein-
leitung in das A. T.," § 526.
|| Is. xxxvii. 38.

232 ^ ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
Whether the compiler of our Book of Isaiah, or of
that portion of it which precedes the fortieth chapter,
derived these four chapters from the Book of Kings,
or from some other source, it would appear that his
object was at once the general one of giving some ac
count of the writer to whom the poems here collected
were attributed (for substantially all that has been
transmitted from antiquity concerning him is contain
ed in these historical notices), and theomore particular
one of acquainting the reader with the occasions on
which it was said that the two poems here added to
the collection were composed. The historical portion
has already received our attention in the examination
of the Book of Kings.*
The first of the two poetical passages was very
probably written by Isaiah, — a triumphal ode, after
the discomfiture of the Assyrian army before Jerusa
lem. It was transmitted to succeeding times ; and
when tradition had, after a course of generations,
done its work, embellishing and misstating the occa
sion on which it was written, and converting it from
commemoration to prediction, it came (history and ode
together), either as a separate fragment, or else as al
ready a part of the Book of Kings, into the possession
of the compiler of the Book of Isaiah, and so was in
stalled in the place where it now stands. The poem,
in the appropriate spirit of a composition such as I
consider it to be, represents the city of God as defying
and deriding the threats of its pagan enemy. Canst
thou hope, it asks, to harm that which the Holy One
of Israel protects % It is Jehovah himself whom
thou hast provoked, when thou hast boasted of thy
achievements, as if they were wrought by thine own

* See above, pp. 133-136.

XLV.] ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. i 233
strength. Know that it was only because he ordained
for thee this success, and to that end sent weakness
and dismay among thine enemies, that thou wert able
to attain it.* But now for thine insolence his ven
geance has turned upon thee ; and the people of this
afflicted land, after having been reduced for two years
to live on the produce of former cultivation, too much
harassed by the invader to sow and reap anew, have
on the third year a joyful " sign " of their Almighty
Friend's gracious purposes for them, in being again at
rest to cultivate their fields, " and plant vineyards, and
eat the fruit thereof." Those of Judah, who have seen
the end of these cruel wars, shall see an age of unpar
alleled glory for their nation. By Jehovah's favor
it shall flourish like a thriving tree, which strikes its
strong roots downwards, and lifts its abundant growth
above.f It was Jehovah's own decree that the proud
Assyrian should never set foot within his sacred pre
cincts. " He shall not come into this city,
Nor shoot an arrow into it ;
He shall not present a shield before it,
Nor cast up a mound against it.
By the way in which he came, by the same shall he return ,
And into this city shall he not come, saith Jehovah.
For I will defend this city, and deliver it,
For mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake." — xxxvii. 33-35.
The second poem, entitled " The writing of Heze
kiah, king of Judah, when he had been sick, and had
recovered from his sickness," might well have been a
work of Hezekiah, or of #any other man, on the occa
sion of a restoration to health. It gives rise to no
other remark, than that it contains no allusion to the
very peculiar circumstances which attended Hezekiah's

* Is. xxxvii. 22-28. ¦)• xxxvii. 29-32.
20*

234 ISAIAH XIII. 1. — XXXIX. 8. [LECT.
sickness, as the historical context describes them. It
represents the restored patient as describing, first,
the anxiety with which he had regarded the prospect
of death, the sufferings and feebleness of his sick
ness, and the reflections which it prompted on the
brevity of life ; * and as expressing, next, the sense
which he feels of the great goodness of Jehovah in his
restoration, and the obligation which he understands
to rest upon him to devote his lengthened life and re
instated strength to the praise and service of his Di
vine Benefactor."]* Not a word alludes to a miraculous
cure, or to the " sign " of a retrogression of the sun's
shadow upon the dial. All that it would seem we can
say of its occupying the place where it ' appears is,
that it was an interesting elegy of earlier times, known
to the compiler of this book as having been attributed
to Hezekiah ; as such, he considered it a not unsuita
ble appendage to his collection of writings of that
age, and introduced it where the context in the his
torical passage afforded a convenient opening.
* Is. xxxviii. 10-14. f xxxviii. 15-20.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1.- LXVI. 24. 235

LECTURE XLVI.
ISAIAH XL. 1.— LXVI. 24.
Question respecting the Authorship or this Passage. — No Ex
ternal Evioence referring it to Isaiah. — Internal Evidence in
dicating a different Author. — Analysis of its Contents. — Pur
pose of Jehovah to restore and defend Israel. — His Greatness
and Wisdom. — Cyrus commissioned to be his Instrument for his
People's Redemption. — The Overthrow of the Babylonish Idol
atry and Empire. — Past and Present Dealings of Jehovah with
his People. — Remonstrances and Encouragements. — Present Hu
miliation and Future Greatness of the Messiah. — Prosperity of
the People under his Government. — Extension of their Faith
and Immunities to the Gentiles. — Rebuke of Prevailing Impieties
and Hypocrisy. — Delay of promised Blessings on their Account.
— Descriptions of the approaching Power and Glory of the
Nation. — The Messiah's Bloody Victories in Idumea. — Thanks
giving for Past Mercies, and Prayer for Future. — Jehovah's Re
ply. — Promise of a great Moral Revolution, and an Equitable
Retribution to the Wicked and the Good. — Quotations from the
Book in the New Testament.
Few propositions, I conceive, depending on the
same kind of evidence, can be considered as better
established than these : — 1. That the last twenty-nine
chapters of the book called by the name of Isaiah
were not written by that prophet ; and 2. That they
were the work of one writer, who lived nearly two
hundred years later, towards the close of the Baby
lonish captivity.
Of external evidence, bearing upon the question,
there is none. Passages from this portion of the book
are, it is true, quoted in the New Testament under the

236 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
name of Isaiah ; * but this proves no more than that in
New Testament times they were included in the col
lection to which his name was attached. Universally,
it is the custom to quote a writing by the name by
which it is commonly known. Otherwise, the refer
ence would not be understood. And no one is expect
ed, in making such a quotation, to enter a caveat
respecting the authorship, under pain of being consid
ered as vouching for the authenticity of the words
which he cites. No one in our day hesitates to quote
the Hymns of Homer by that title, however incredu
lous he may be, and may know that his hearers are,
respecting their being the productions of a poet of that
name. And no Biblical critic would think of main
taining, that to refer to the Book of Psalms by its com
mon title of " The Psalms of David," is to make one's
self responsible for the opinion that that monarch was
the author of the whole collection. The application
of a name in this way to a number of writings does
not even prove that the whole of them had been at
any time attributed to the writer named. For all the
purposes involved in that way of speaking, it is enough
to justify that application, that the individual named
has been understood to be the writer of the princi
pal part of the collection.-]"
* Is. xl. 3, comp. Matt. iii. 3, Luke iii. '4, John i. 23 ; xiii. 1-4,
comp. Matt. xii. 18-21; liii. 1, comp. John xii. 38, Rom. x. 16 ; liii. 4,
comp. Matt. viii. 17; Ixv. 1, 2, comp. Rom. x. 20, 21.
f Compare Prov. i. 1, where we have the title of the whole book, with
xxx. 1, xxxi. 1. In the list of the Old Testament books in the Talmud (see
Vol. I. p. 40), the order of the later prophets is Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and
the Minor Prophets. But Isaiah was the earliest in time of all the authors
of the larger prophetical books. Why, then, was the book which goes by
his name placed last? Different unsatisfactory answers have been given to
this question. I think the true answer is afforded by the view taken above
of the book, as a compilation from two or more authors. The books of Jer
emiah and Ezekiel are placed first, as being, throughout, compositions of the

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. l.-LXVI. 24. 237
When we pass to the internal evidence, the whole
complexion of the passage indicates a different writer
from Isaiah. Perhaps, in this argument, too much
stress may have been laid upon mere philological pecu
liarities of the passage, pointing to its composition at
a period when the Hebrew tongue had been corrupted
by intercourse with the people of the Chaldee monar
chy ; * for, in our imperfect knowledge of the history
of both languages, we cannot be sure that the author
ized Hebrew of Isaiah's time did not include forms
and meanings of words now only recognized as Chal
dee, and we cannot be sure that the peculiarities which
we notice belonged to the original text, and are not
rather to be traced to transcribers in later times. But
the whole strain of the writer f is not that of one who
lived as Isaiah did, when Judea was still an indepen
dent and sovereign, though a tottering state, but of one

writers whose names they bear. Then comes Isaiah, a book of a mixed
character, but made up from a small number of sources. And then, in one
book, to close the series, the Minor Prophets, no less than twelve in number.
* For instances, see De Wette's " Einleitung," § 208 ; Gesenius's " Com-
mentar," Theil III. s. 24. See also, De Wette, ubi supra, and Gesenius, s.
16, for examples of phraseology of the writer of these passages, distinguish
ing him from Isaiah. As to the general character of the composition, no
careful reader fails to remark the difference between the flowing, perspicuous,
and somewhat diffuse, though brilliant, style of the later writer, and the
more compact and vigorous, though less polished, composition of Isaiah.
f I say, " of the writer " ; for, as Rosenmiiller well observes, " That the
whole of this portion of the book is the work of one author appears from
the identity of style, and the frequent recurrence of the same forms of
thought and language. There is a constant repetition of the same topics of
encouragement and consolation, the same promises of deliverance and resto
ration, of a reestablishment of the holy state and city, of vengeance to be ex
ecuted on the hostile nations, and of future happy times, when the Hebrew
people shall be sovereign over kings, and subdue and rule all nations. The
Divine power and truth, and the vanity and worthlessness of idols, are again
and again set forth, in the same or similar phraseology," &c. For numer
ous examples to sustain these observations see the passage quoted, in Ro-
senmuller's " Comment, in Esaiam/' Tom. III. pp. 7, 8.

238 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
addressing his countrymen under their character of
captives and exiles, comforting them under the actual
afflictions of their lot, and laboring to inspire in them
the hope of a future destruction of their now trium
phant enemies, and their own happy return to their
now deserted land. Jerusalem and its temple are in
ruins. Judea is a desert. The Assyrian invasion is
long passed. Babylon has reached its height of power,
and Cyrus the Persian is lord in its palaces. And all
this is spoken of, not as something future, but as
something existing before the writer's eyes. To make
the hypothesis at all credible which refers such a rep
resentation to Isaiah, it would seem necessary that, in
speaking of such a future state of things, he should at
least have introduced it by saying something of that
earlier, but still (to him) future, state of things by
which it was brought about ; namely, the conquest
of Judea by the arms of Nebuchadnezzar. But no
where is this referred to, except as it is implied in that
distressed condition of the people which it occasioned,
and which the writer saw and described.
The correctness of these statements will appear in a
brief survey of the contents of the passage. With
reference to its principal topics, though these are by
no means kept distinct, but, on the contrary, are fre
quently intermingled, and presented with much repe
tition, it may be conveniently divided into three parts.
The first part, including nine chapters, contains assur
ances to the people of a deliverance from their present
misery, founded on considerations of the long-suf
fering mercy of Jehovah, and his past gracious inter
positions in their behalf, and points to the new Persian
power as the instrument of his designs. The second
part, in twelve chapters, depicts the future greatness
of the reestablished nation. The third, extending

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. 239
through six chapters to the end of the book, resumes
the subject of the expected restoration to home and
freedom, accompanied with threats of further punish
ment, if further disobedience should call for its inflic
tion. The first passage opens with the joyful message to
Jerusalem, that " her hard service is ended, her in
iquity is expiated." Her people are far distant from
their ancient abode, and a wide waste lies between it
and them. But their comforter hears a voice pro
claiming that a straight and level road shall be made
for them to cross it, and that Jehovah himself, whose
promise is immutable, while all earthly things fade
and die, will, for his own glory's sake, be their guide
and protector on the toilsome and dangerous way.*
Have any yielded to the temptations of their abject
position, and bowed down to the idols of the strange
land of their bondage, — the vanity of such false ob
jects of trust, made of " a piece of wood 'that will not
rot," is contrasted, for their admonition, with the in
finite majesty of Him
" Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
And meted out the heavens with his span,
And gathered the dust of the earth into a measure,
And weighed the mountains in scales,
And the hills in a balance." — xl. 12.
" It is He, that sitteth above the circle of the earth,
And the inhabitants are to him as grasshoppers ;
That stretcheth out the heavens as a thin canopy,
And spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in ;
That bringeth princes to nothing,
And reduceth the rulers of the earth to vanity.
Yea, scarcely are they planted, scarcely are they sown,
Scarcely hath their stem taken root in the ground,
When He bloweth upon them, and they wither,
And the whirlwind beareth them away like stubble." — xl. 22 - 24.
* Is. xl. 1-11.

240 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
He it is in whom Israel is called upon to trust for
rescue, and may trust with triumphant confidence.*
" He giveth power to the faint ;
To the feeble abundant strength.
The youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young warriors shall utterly fall.
But they that trust in Jehovah shall renew their strength ;
They shall lift up their wings like eagles ;
They shall run, and not be weary ;
They shall walk, and not faint." — xl. 29-31.
Other nations, who, in their insane presumption,
have exalted themselves above the chosen people of
God, must see with amazement and dismay the de
liverance he works in their behalf. He hath chosen
his instrument of vengeance, the Persian conqueror,
" whom victory meeteth in his march," who has al
ready made their victorious swords "like dust, and their
bows like driven stubble." Their combinations all are
vain. Jehovah will not forsake " Israel his servant,
Jacob whom he has chosen, the son of Abraham, his
friend:" Let Israel not fear nor faint. Through the
champion whom he hath raised up in their behalf, God
will give his people a signal victory over all their ene
mies ; -\ and an increased beauty and abundance of the
home to which they shall return shall be a yet further
token to them of his love ; J while the judgments
which the northern victor, who " trampleth upon
princes as upon mortar, as the potter treadeth down
the clay," visits upon the refractory nations, are as
unlooked for as they are terrific. Their bold pretend
ers to wisdom knew nothing of what awaited them.
" There was not one that foretold it ; not one that de
clared it." They had no more wisdom to foresee, than
power to prevent. §

* Is. xl. 13-28. f xii. 1-16. J xii. 17-20. §xli.21-28.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. 241
" Behold, they are all vanity ;
Their works are nothing ;
Their molten images are wind and emptiness." — xii. 29.
The first clause of the next chapter, " Behold my
servant, whom I uphold," presents a form of expres
sion frequently occurring in this portion of the book, *
and not found in the genuine writings of Isaiah. I
can well imagine that the writer may have used the
phrase, when the occasion served, to designate that
great personage whom he, like all enlightened Jews of
his age, expected to appear, in God's time, as the ruler
and benefactor of the nation. -\ But certainly this is
not the only sense in which he understood the title,
because in some passages he has expressly defined it
as being applied to the people of Israel collectively. %
And I conceive that it is in this latter sense that the
context requires the expression to be here understood ;
for when the servant spoken of is charged with blind
ness, deafness, and spiritual indifference, § the reader
cannot suppose that it is the Messiah who is referred
to. God' is represented as saying that he destines his
people for the high office of instructor to the nations,
an office to be executed with integrity, gentleness, and
perseverance. || Consecrated by himself to this func
tion, Jehovah, the Almighty God " who created the
heavens and stretched them out," will by no means
suffer them to be overborne, and so to fail of its
accomplishment. Having constituted them to be a
light to the benighted nations, to deliver those nations
* Is. xii. 8; xiii. 1, 19; xliv. 1,21; xiv. 4 ; xlviii. 20; xlix. 3; Hi. 13.
f See Vol. II. pp. 381 et seq.
X xii. 8 ; xliv. 1, 2, 21 ; xiv. 4 ; xlviii. 20 ; xlix. 3.
§ xiii. 18-20.
|| xiii. 1-4. Of course, I am not unmindful of the reference to this in
Matt. xii. 17-21 ; but the discussion of the question thence arising belongs
to another place.
VOL. III. 21

242 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
from the prisons of spiritual darkness, he will not
abandon them to be triumphed over and brought to
ruin. That would be to '' give his glory to another,
and his praise to graven images." * Let his name, on
the contrary, be glorified, and let his praise resound
through distant lands ; and he will take care that it
shall be so, and that the worshippers of idols shall be
confounded by his mighty interposition in his people's
behalff His chosen people themselves have shared in the
infatuation and sins which they were commissioned to
dispel and reform ; and for this they have been sorely
punished by his providential ordinations. J But now
all this is past. Jehovah is reconciled and propitious.
His people shall be abased no longer. He will be
with them in every strait and peril. He will turn
away hostile arms from them upon other victims ; he
" will give Egypt for their ransom ; Ethiopia and Seba
for their escape." He will collect their wanderers
from the most distant climes. The North shall give
up, and the South not withhold. Other nations have
not known his purposes. But to Israel they were
made known of old. Israel is his witness that they
were long ago formed. Israel shall be his witness
that they are executed, and accordingly that " from
the beginning of time he has been the same, that none
can rescue from his hand, that he undertakes and
none can hinder." § To fulfil these purposes, and se
cure to himself this testimony, he abases the pride of
Babylon, and brings down her proud citizens to toil at
the oars of the ships once the instruments of their
luxury. || And to these ends will he work yet other

* Is. xiii. 5-9. f xiii. 10-17. J xiii. 18-25.
$ xliii. 1-13. || xliii. 14, 15.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. 243
wonders. He, who of old delivered his chosen by
whelming the hosts of Egypt in the Red Sea, will de
liver them again by conducting them in safety to their
ancient abode, across the dry and howling wilderness.*
Not for their deserts will he so prosper them, for they
had withholden their due oblations, they " had bur
dened him with their sins, and wearied him with their
iniquities " ; and for this he had " given up Jacob to
a curse, and Israel to reproach." But for his own
sake he " will blot out their transgressions, and not
remember their sins." -f
The favor of Jehovah, so conspicuously manifested
to his people, will attract the attention of strangers,
who will "seek the protection, of Israel," and enroll
themselves as the worshippers of Israel's God. J Well
may they do so, for he alone has proved himself faith
ful to his promises. While his people are his wit
nesses that his administration of their concerns has
proceeded on the principles announced through Mo
ses, when he " established the people of old," all the
professions of idol deities and their votaries have
proved but so many deceptions. § How should it be
otherwise % Idol deities are but the work of the hands
of foolish men, who with one block from their wood
land heat their ovens to bake their bread and meat,
and with axe, plane, and compass shape another
to be the object of their stupid adoration. || Let not
Israel confound with such toys the greatness of the
everlasting God, but implicitly trust him for the fu
ture, as she hath experienced his goodness in the past.
It is the same Divine Benefactor who wrought those
ancient wonders, that now calls for a new song of tri-

* Is. xliii. 16-21. f xliii. 22-28. J xliv. 1-5.
§ xliv. 6-9. || xliv. 10-20.

244 ISAIAH XL. 1.^- LXVI. 24. [LECT.
umph for the deliverance he is about to vouchsafe
from present trouble. The almighty and immutable
Jehovah, who created all things, who stretched out
the heavens, and spread the earth, who in his myste
rious providence exposes the baseless claims of all pre
tenders to wisdom, is giving a new proof of the un-
changeableness of his purposes of mercy.* It is even
he
" Who saith of Jerusalem, ' She shall be inhabited ' ;
And of the cities of Judah, ' They shall be built,'
And ' Her desolated places I will restore.'
Who saith to the deep, ' Be dry !
I will dry up thy streams ! '
Who saith of Cyrus, ' He is my shepherd ;
He shall perform all my pleasure ' ;
Who saith of Jerusalem, ' She shall be built ' ;
And of the temple, ' Her foundation shall be laid.' " — xliv. 26 - 28.
The writer, while he witnesses the victories of Cy
rus over the nations by whom Israel had been tram
pled on, naturally regards him as the chosen instru
ment in the hand of Jehovah for the emancipation
and restoration of his people. Impressed with this
sentiment, and not improbably also prompted by the
hope of conciliating the king's favor to his nation, he
represents Cyrus as having been chosen to be the fa
vorite and friend of that great God of the Jews, who
for his people's sake has hitherto given him unob
structed success, and will still go before him, and lead
him in the path of victory. " I have girded thee,"
Jehovah is represented as saying to Cyrus, "though
thou hast not known me," I who " form the light, and
create darkness," uniting in myself the attributes as
cribed in the Persian theology to the rival principles
in nature. Thus I have done, and will continue to
do, to the end that the name of the God of Israel,
* Is. xliv. 21-25.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. 245
who has given thee this power, may be glorified, and
that " Men may know from the rising of the sun,
And from the West, that there is none besides me " ; — xiv. 6.
and that, whenever prosperity and deliverance come,
" it is I, Jehovah, that have created it." *
It is not for any, the writer proceeds, to contest
the equity of Jehovah's administration, or to complain
because a foreign, and not a native prince, is made the
agent of his gracious purposes. It is not for the clay
to contend with the potter, or the child with the par
ent. Children may safely be left to a parent's discre
tion, and Israel may confidently trust itself to the
compassion of its Heavenly Friend. He who created
all things has in his unerring wisdom raised up to
his peculiar people a suitable and a sufficient earthly
deliverer. Inscrutable as are God's purposes in this
arrangement, the issue shall be happy and glorious for
his people. Their enemies, laden with treasures, shall
come suppliant to their feet ; " they shall go to confu
sion together, that are makers of idols," and the deliv
erance of the chosen race shall all redound to the
glory of its God."f The idolatrous nations shall take
note of the deliverance which, agreeably to his ancient
word, " not spoken in secret," he hath wrought for
Israel ; and, abandoning their idols " that cannot save,"
shall penitently turn to " the God that formed the
earth, that made it firm, and created it not in vain." J
" ' Only in Jehovah,' shall men say,
' Is salvation and strength ;
To him shall come, and be put to shame,
All that are incensed against him.' " — xiv. 24.
Again, in the forty-sixth chapter, the writer exhorts
* Is. xiv. 1-8. f xlv- 9" l7- X xiv. 18-25.
20*

246 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
his countrymen to constancy, by exposing the vanity of
trust in idols, and appealing to the unchangeableness
of that mercy of Jehovah which has followed Israel in
every former time, and is even now giving her a deliv
erer from her oppressors, even " the eagle from the
East." The images of the Babylonian gods, he says,
are coming down from their high places. So far from
being able to support their votaries, they are them
selves conveyed helplessly away on the backs of weary
beasts.* But Jehovah has borne his people "from
their birth," and " even to hoar hairs will carry them." t
He is all unlike the senseless idol of the goldsmith's
making, which " they lift upon the shoulder, and carry;
they set it in its place, and there it standeth ; from its
place it moveth not." £ Let it be observed and re
membered by doubters, how constant he has always
been to his designs of mercy in ancient times, and how
mightily even now, by the agency of " the man that
executeth his purpose, from a far country," he is giv
ing " to Zion salvation, and to Israel his glory." §
The forty-seventh chapter is a song of triumph over
Babylon. The arrogant and pampered queen of na
tions has to " come down and sit in the dust," and ex
change the delicate habits of her voluptuous life for
hard and sordid labor. || Jehovah has declared her
doom, because of the cruel oppression exercised over
his people, when for their sins he gave them into her
hand.^[ Her presumptuous confidence is of no avail
but to embitter the distress of her sudden desolation.**
The arts of her astrologers and sorcerers must appear
for the unprofitable things that they are.

* Is. xlvi. 1, 2.
§ xlvi. 8-13.
** xlvii. 8-11.

t xlvi 3, 4.
|| xlvii. 1 - 3.

X xlvi. 5-7.
TT xlvii. 4-7.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. 247
" They shall be like stubble ; the fire shall burn them up ;
They shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame ;
Not a coal shall be left of them to warm one,
Nor a spark of fire to sit by." — xlvii. 14.
And among all whom she has befriended, she shall not
find a single helper.*
I think that the forty-eighth chapter, as well as the
two next preceding, indicate the time of the composition
to have been immediately subsequent to the capture
of Babylon by Cyrus, and when the writer was look
ing for the emancipation and restoration of his coun
trymen as one of the consequences of that event. God
is represented as saying to his fickle people, that what
they had seen happen in the overthrow of the Chaldee
power was agreeable to what he had told them long
ago ; that is, in all the assurances he had given them
through their great prophet Moses, that he would
be their guardian, and the enemy of their foes. Ob
durate and unimpressible as they really were, not
withstanding the parade of their professions, they had
been fully apprised of old that he was to be their de
liverer, lest, when any deliverance came, they should
vainly ascribe" it to the power of graven and molten
images."]" At length they saw fulfilled Jehovah's
anciently declared purpose to interpose in their behalf,
and it had been brought to pass in so unexpected a
way, that they could not pretend it to have been
within the calculations of their own foresight. % Nor
was their deliverance owing to any merit of their own.
On the contrary, as they had been presumptuous in
prosperity, so they had been impenitent in affliction.
Jehovah had done all for the sake of his own name
and glory. That the immutableness of his own
counsels might appear, he had raised up him whom
* Is. xlvii. 12-15. f xlviii. 1-5. J xlviii. 6-8.

248 ISAIAH XL. l.-LXVI. 24. [LECT.
he loved to " execute his pleasure upon Babylon, and
his power upon the Chaldeans." *
The writer goes on in his own name : — From the
beginning of these transactions I have told you what
would be their result, and since it has been in a train
of accomplishment, I have confidently repeated the
declaration, as by God's own guidance. It is his own
will that I urge upon you when I say, that he is
ready to be in his providence your teacher and guide,
and that all prosperity shall be permanently yours, if
you will but hearken to his commandments."]" In the
progress of events which he has ordered, you are pres
ently to go forth from the land of your captivity.
Proclaim abroad that it is Jehovah that redeemed you.
And remember it, too, for your own government ; for
be assured, that, however prospered now, he will give
no lasting peace to the wicked. £
In the portion of the book which next follows, the
writer looks forward to the time when, his nation be
ing reestablished in its ancient seats, he trusts that its
prosperity and greatness will be renewed and glori
ously increased. For this confidence, his warrant is
the constant attachment of Jehovah to his people,
which had refused to be estranged, when they had
wandered from their allegiance, and "spent their
strength for vanity." § His gracious purposes were of
too vast a comprehension to be satisfied even with the
establishment of " the tribes of Jacob," and the res
toration of " the preserved of Israel." He designed
no less than to make them " the light of the nations,"
and to extend through them his salvation to " the ends
of the earth/' || Despised and abhorred as his hum-

* Is. xlviii. 9-15. f xlviii. 16 - 19. J xlviii. 20 - 22.
§ xlix. 1-4. II xlix. 5-6.

XLVI] ISAIAH XL. 1.- LXVI. 24. 249
bie people had been, he would yet exalt them to such
greatness that " kings should see them and stand up,
yea, princes, and do them homage." Through them
the destitute should find plenty ; the imprisoned, en
largement; the benighted, illumination. So tender
should be his protection, that neither hunger, nor
thirst, nor unwholesome heats, should ever afflict
them more ; so careful his guidance, that from every
part of the world where they had wandered, they
should be gathered safely to their homes, to repose un
der the wing of his parental providence.*
Well might the heavens and the earth sing rejoic
ingly, and the mountains break forth into a shout,
when Jehovah had such " compassion on his afflicted
ones." Zion, under a sense of unworthiness, might
well dread desertion by her Heavenly Benefactor. But
Jehovah's love was more true than the tenderness of
a mother for the infant on her bosom. He would dis
comfit her enemies. He would load her with their
spoils. Her ample bounds should be all too narrow for
her many children. Kings and queens should nurse
her greatness, and bow in humiliation at her feet. As
the prey cannot " be taken away from the mighty," so
Jehovah could not be foiled in his design. He would
show himself " the Mighty One of Jacob," by crush
ing all her oppressors in the dustf
Do any desponding observers of the signs of the times
disbelieve me \ he asks. Who can show that Jehovah
ever divorced his betrothed people, J or sold to another
master the servants who could not discharge their
debts to him'? It is true that he had afflicted them
for their deafness to his admonitions, and their back-
slidings from his service. But as he was able to pun-
* Is. xlix. 7-12. f xlix- 13-26. J Comp. liv. 5.

250 ISAIAH XL. 1. —LXVI. 24. [LECT.
ish, so he had " power to deliver." * To him who was
declaring these truths Jehovah had given a docile dis
position to receive them, a power of persuasion, and a
principle of perseverance in the work. Rather than
be false to his trust, he was willing to expose himself
to the outrages and contumely of his incredulous fel
low-citizens ; for he knew that Jehovah, whose honor
he was asserting, would protect and vindicate him, and
that all who feared the great Master, and felt the need
of light from him, would " hearken to the voice of his
servant," while such as were content with the feeble
and evanescent glare of sparks from fires of their own
kindling would but realize the sentence he uttered
against them, and helplessly " lie down in sorrow." f
Let such, he continues, as pursue righteousness, and
seek after Jehovah, encourage themselves for the fu
ture by contemplation of the past. As Jehovah had
blessed and multiplied the posterity of Abraham and
Sarah, he would not leave his work of mercy incom
plete, but "have pity upon Zion, and upon all her des
olations." J She should be a fountain of law to the
world, and in her should his statutes be " established
for the light of the nations." A revolution in human
affairs should take place, as great as if the heavens
should vanish like smoke, and the earth decay like a
worn garment. And from the ruin a better order of
things should spring up, to endure for ever, in which
" distant lands should wait for Jehovah, and trust in
his arm." § Let not the righteous of God's people be
disheartened by men's revilings. For the triumph of
the mocker should be but short, while God's favor
should be unchangeable and everlasting. He who in
old time had appeared in wonderful works for his peo-
* Is. 1.1-3. fl-4"11- J li. 1-3. § li. 4-6.

XLVI-] ISAIAH XL. 1.- LXVI. 24. 251
pie would be sure again to display himself, and bring
them back in gladness and triumph to their homes.
Let them have no anxiety about the fury of the op
pressor, who was doomed soon to " perish like grass."
Jehovah, who " stretched out the heavens, and founded
the earth," " that rebuketh the sea, when its waves
roar," would not fail to deliver and provide for his
own distressed people.* For their sins they had
" drunk from the hand of Jehovah the cup of his
fury," and they had no earthly champion " to take
them by the hand." But offended as he had been,
and severely as he had been compelled to punish, their
Heavenly Friend had not wholly cast them off, and
the time had come when he would take the cup of
destruction from their hand, and hold it to the lips of
the arrogant oppressors who had walked over their
prostrate bodies.f
Let Zion arouse herself, and put on her robes ; let
Jerusalem, the holy city, be clothed in her beautiful
array ; let Jerusalem shake herself from the dust and
sit erect, let the captive daughter of Zion loose her
self from her chains ; for Jehovah's will was to set
his people free. As in the oldest times they had been
oppressed in Egypt, and afterwards by the Assyrian
invader, so now they were in exile in the distant East.
But why should they be suffered to remain among
tyrants by whom " all day long the name of Jeho
vah is blasphemed " % % It should be so no longer.
Beautiful already were seen moving on the distant
mountains the feet of the heralds of the deliverance of
captive Judah. § Glad was the shout of the watch
men who proclaimed that the God of Israel was re
turning with his people to take possession of their
* Is. li. 7-15. t li- 16-23. $ Iii. 1-5. § Comp. Nahum i. 15.

252 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
ancient realm. Let the ruins of Jerusalem, now to be
rebuilt, send back an answering shout. Jehovah was
manifesting his resistless power "in the sight of all
the nations." Let his people but be worthy of his
care, and alone it should be all-sufficient for them.
Let them but purify their lives and hearts as became
those who " bare the vessels of Jehovah," and they
needed no other precaution. They needed not to seek
safety in a hasty flight, for Jehovah himself would
lead their van, and guard their rear.*
We have now reached a passage which, for its
length, has probably occasioned as much discussion as
any other in the Old Testament. The fifty-third chap
ter of this book, with which the last three verses of
the fifty-second are usually connected, has been com
monly considered by Christian commentators as a re
markable prophecy of Jesus ; and Paley has selected
it from all the alleged predictions of the Jewish writ
ers, as establishing beyond question the possession by
one of them of a supernatural knowledge of the com
ing Messiah."]"
It is a passage, in any way of viewing it, exceed
ingly obscure. Some of its verses scarcely admit
of a satisfactory translation of any kind, and are ac
cordingly so differently rendered in the ancient ver
sions, as to show that the authors of those versions
were at a loss, and supplied their want of knowledge
by conjecture. In this state of things, the view which
a translator takes of the general import of a passage
cannot fail to affect his rendering of the several parts ;
and the reader of the English version, who thinks that
he peruses a remarkable description of Jesus Christ,
* Is. Hi. 7-12.
t Comp. Paley's " Evidences of Christianity," Part II. Chap. 1.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1. -LXVI. 24. 253
must remember that, among a variety of translations of
which different verses admit, the one before his eye is
the work of scholars who agreed with him in their
theory respecting the interpretation, and who were
under an unavoidable bias to select the version most
accordant with that theory. Nor will he fail to ob
serve that, in his own way of rendering, there is much
in the passage to which it is difficult to ascribe a clear
meaning of any kind ; that there is much which only
in the exercise of an extremely adventurous imagina
tion can be applied to Jesus ; and that even in parts
which have been supposed to admit of the most ex
act application of this kind, the words do not bear out
the construction. Such is the case with the clause,
" He made his grave with the wicked, and with the
rich in his death," where, to sustain the received inter
pretation of a reference to the crucifixion of Jesus be
tween the thieves, and his interment in the tomb of
Joseph, the circumstances should be reversed, and the
clause should read, " He made his grave with the rich,
and was with the wicked in his death."
If there were any good reason to ascribe this pas
sage to Isaiah, we should have some guidance in its
explanation, derived from our knowledge of his age and
position, and our reasonings, more or less probable,
concerning the objects which he, living when and act
ing as he did, might be supposed to have in view.
But possessing it only as the work of an anonymous^
writer, — altogether ignorant both of his position and,
except as known from these compositions, of the sub
jects which occupied his thoughts, — we are destitute
of all such aid, though, from the same cause, the ques
tion as to what his meaning was becomes one of much
less importance.
In the various constructions which have been put
vol. in. 22

254 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
upon the passage by different critics, Jewish and
Christian, the writer has been supposed to have had
in view the Jewish people, spoken of collectively ; the
righteous part of the people ; the priesthood ; the
body of prophets ; finally, some individual of the sa
cred , history, as the Kings Uzziah, Hezekiah, and Jo
siah, and the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.
The best attention which I have been able to give
to the passage, at different times during several years,
has brought my mind to the conclusion that the writer
meant to refer to the Jewish Messiah, as that person
age was understood by the men of his time.* There
are parts which, in order to reconcile them with this
view, require an interpretation which is not at first
sight obvious, and which, accustomed as we are to a
different theory, may even appear violent. But the
truth is, no theory can be adopted which is not open to
at least equal objection on this score. The only differ
ence is, that the difficulties of the received interpreta
tion have by force of habit ceased to impress our minds.
As far as I know, the " servant of Jehovah," the
mention of whom is introduced in the thirteenth verse
of the fifty-second chapter, has been uniformly under
stood by the commentators to be the subject of the
passage which follows ; that is, to be the person de
scribed as " despised and forsaken of men," &c."|" And
this view has given countenance to the opinion, that
it was the Jewish people that the writer was treating
of; for there can be no doubt that the designation
" servant of God " is habitually applied to the people
at large by the pseudo-Isaiah. J But I conceive that
the division between the fifty-second and fifty-third
* For my view of the Jewish idea of the Messiah, and its origin, see
Vol. II. pp. 377-379.
f Is. liii. 3. X See above, p. 241, note J.

XLVL] ISAIAH XL. 1. - LXVI. 24. 255
chapters, in our Hebrew and English Bibles, is correct.
In that portion of the former chapter on which we
have already remarked, the writer had exulted in the
prospect of the people's return to their home, under
the guidance of their covenant-God. In the three
closing verses, which I think should not be dissevered
from what precedes, he goes on to say that the people,
Jehovah's "servant," shall prosper in its recovered
realm. Despised as it had been, subjected to the most
irritating contumely from powerful and oppressive foes,
a vast revolution would unexpectedly take place, and
those enemies should become its submissive subjects,
or its enthusiastic and exulting allies*
But while the people was thus to be raised from ex
treme humiliation to illustrious power, its fortune in
both respects was of course to be shared by the great
champion under whom it should achieve its grandeur.
As one of the nation, he was of course now expe
riencing his full share of the indignities and wrongs
heaped upon it. It was from the midst of that wretch
edness and lowliness that his glorious manifestation
was to be looked for. The chosen race was now " de
spised by men, abhorred by the people, the servant of
tyrants " ; yet " kings should see and stand up, prin
ces should pay it homage, on account of Jehovah, who
is faithful, the Holy One of Israel."* Its looked for
Messiah was one, and the chief, of that race. In
abasement and in triumph its lot was to be eminently
his. " Who hath believed our report 1 " Who will
not turn an incredulous ear, asks the writer, when it
is declared that a people now stricken down so low is
to be exalted to such glorious fortunes as those which
I have just now been describing % Yet so it is to be.
And its greatness is to be attained under the guidance
* Comp. Is. xlix. 7.

256 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
of one of its own number, now in an obscure, suffer
ing, contemned condition, like all of his compatriots,
but destined to blaze upon the astonished world in
the delegated splendor of Jehovah, to assert his " por
tion with the mighty," and " with heroes to divide the
spoil." This I take to be the theme of the fifty-third chap
ter of the Book of Isaiah, — a reference to the Messiah,
but to a Messiah erroneously expected soon to appear
for the reestablishment of the nation, and to a Messiah
such as the Jews, in their erroneous conception of the
character, understood him. In such an animated pas
sage, which the contemporaries of the writer had
Such a different preparation for readily comprehending
from ourselves, we cannot wonder if the first mention
of the personage to whom it relates should be abrupt,
without an antecedent for the pronoun by which he is
introduced. "Who hath believed our report,
And to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed ?
For he grew up before him like a tender plant." — liii. 1, 2.
But I doubt whether even that abruptness, which at
first view seems to result from the separation I pro
pose between the fifty-second and fifty-third chapters,
exists. I incline to think that the phrase " the arm
of Jehovah " was intended by the writer to be used as
a title of the Messiah, and is accordingly the proper
and significant antecedent of the pronoun in the fol
lowing verse. " The arm of Jehovah " seems to be
an exceedingly appropriate designation for the person
in whom the power of Jehovah was expected to be
conspicuously manifested ; and on other occasions of
this writer's use of the title, it is natural to give it the
same interpretation.* * Comp. Is. xl. 10 ; li. 5.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1.- LXVI. 24. 257
Proceeding on this basis of interpretation, we may
paraphrase the passage before us somewhat as fol
lows : — Men hear with incredulity what I say of the
approaching greatness of this afflicted people, to be
attained under the' conduct of a leader who, as one of
themselves, is a sharer in the deep depression of their
fortunes. He, the hope of Israel, the lion of Judah,
the future sovereign of a mighty realm, is now pre
paring for his high destiny amid the hardships of a
mean and despised condition. The soil in which this
tender plant of future greatness grows is the dry one
of want and sorrow. No pomp or majesty, nothing of
an imposing or attractive exterior, now invests the fu
ture monarch. Men turn away their faces in scorn
from him to whom by and by they will look up with
awful reverence.* But "stricken from above, smitten
and afflicted of God," as he may seem to be, it is no
unworthiness of his own that has brought him to this
condition. It is " our transgressions " for which " he
is wounded," " our iniquities " for which he suffers the
chastisement; his lowliness and sorrows are not to be
taken as any token of the Divine displeasure against
himself; they are but brought on him by his partner
ship in the fortunes of our perverse and disobedient
people, which, having long provoked the Divine dis
pleasure, is now suffering under its stern inflictions.
The national chastisement which expiates our sin, and
leads to " our peace," f the " stripes " by which " we
are healed," and restored to penitence and to God's
forgiveness and favor, fall upon him, innocent though
he is, as a sharer in all that befalls his people. We,
the nation, " have gone astray like sheep, and turned
every one to his own devices," and it is " the iniquity

* Is. liii. 1-3. X ComP- xl- 2-
22*

258 ISAIAH XL. 1.— LXVI. 24. [LECT.
of us all," and not any personal delinquency, the ret
ribution of which " Jehovah has laid upon him." *
As yet you hear from him no sound of complaint, or
expostulation, or resistance. The voice that is pres
ently to rouse the nation to independence and glory,
as yet is as mute as that of a lamb led to the slaugh
ter, or a ewe to the shearing."]" By an oppressive sen
tence he has been carried away captive, with the un
distinguished mass of his countrymen ; and who has
there been to make known his high descent % When
" he was taken away from the land of the living," it
was " for the transgression of my people," not his
own ; it was they that were smitten, and he but as
one of them. J In presumptuous ignorance men have
anticipated for him a grave with the wicked and
worthless. But God has other designs for him, and,
his great career finished, his death will in fact be
among the rich and noble. " Although he has done
no injustice," free as he is from fraud and every kind
of ill-desert, yet " it hath pleased Jehovah to bruise
him," by laying on him a share of the common ca
lamity. Though thou, Jehovah, dost permit him thus
to suffer for others' sins, he shall yet see a glorious
fruit of his toils and cares, and, through the long years
of his happier life, " the pleasure of Jehovah shall
prosper in his hand." § Freed from his sorrows, he
* Is. liii. 4-6. f li"- 7-
X liii. 8. — " Who has there been to make known his high descent?"
I give this only as what on the whole appears to me the most probable inter
pretation of the clause ; there is no end to the different constructions that
have been put upon it by commentators. — " The land of the living " ; for
an illustration of the train of thought by which this language might be ap
plied to Judea, see Is. xxvi. 14, 15, 19 ; perhaps, however, the expression
cutting off from the land of the living is rather to be understood as de
scriptive of extreme calamity; comp. Ps. Ixxxviii. — "It -was they that
were smitten," I'dS J,'JJ; commonly rendered "he was smitten"; but I
take it the pronoun will not bear to be translated as singular.
§ liii. 9, 10.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1.- LXVI. 24. 259
shall see the end and be satisfied, — satisfied that by
his knowledge he guides to righteousness and peace
that multitude of his people in the consequences of
whose past guilt he had shared* Therefore, in com
pensation of his past sufferings, occasioned by no de
merit of his own, — therefore, because " he bore the
sin of many " while rising to " interpose " for their
rescue, — because he has been " numbered with trans
gressors," and his life been as it were " poured out unto
death," — therefore is it the Divine pleasure that he
shall have at last " his portion with the mighty, and
with heroes divide the spoil." f
The writer again breaks out into exultation in the
prospect of the future glory of his emancipated and
reestablished people. The' barren is once more to be
fruitful ; the despised to be renowned ; the straitened
to enlarge its borders till it " shall possess the nations
and people the desolate cities," and its temporary
abasement be no more remembered.^ All this is to be
under the favor of Jehovah, that " Holy One of Is
rael," who, in the extension of his people's dominion,
shall be manifested as " the God of the whole earth."
He had divorced his bride for her unworthiness, but
it was only for a time. He receives her again to his
affection, and " with everlasting kindness will he have
mercy upon her." As he once sware that the waters
of Noah's deluge should no more return, so now he
swears that he will never more " be angry with her,
nor rebuke her," and sooner " shall the mountains
depart and the hills be overthrown," than his cove
nant of pardon and peace be again annulled. § He
* Is. liii. n.
¦f liii. 12. — " He poured out " ; rather they poured out or exposed (as
the Septuagint renders it) , the Hebrew impersonal ; rnj? signifies he was
naked, and rni?D, the Hiphil conjugation, he made naked, or exposed.
X liv. 1-4." y Hv. 5-10.

260 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
will build up her walls with all precious stones. He
will teach her all truth, and visit her with all pros
perity. Let her dismiss fear, for the strongest alli
ance formed against her, wanting his favor, shall fail.
He is the creator of those who form all agents of de
struction, and none aimed at her shall avail.* His
mercy is offered freely to them who will receive it.
Let them not waste their toil for things which, pos
sessed, will not satisfy, but by obedience merely pre
sent themselves to receive the best that they can crave.
For God will then fulfil for them his ancient cove
nant. He will establish over them the great Son of
David, graciously promised of old.f He shall be not
only their ruler, but a leader and lawgiver to other
nations, who shall gladly seek the alliance of Israel,
" for the sake of the protection of Jehovah her God." J
All these blessings shall be theirs, if they will only
steadfastly forsake their past evil ways. For his
thoughts and ways are not like the thoughts and
ways of fickle and feeble men, but as much above
them as " the heavens are higher than the earth " ; and
with the same invariable tendency as that by which
the fertilizing showers fall from the clouds and do not
return, will his inscrutable providence accomplish his
faithful word, to make his reconciled people illustri
ously happy. §
The time for all this is close at hand. Therefore
let the condition on which it is to be realized be
speedily fulfilled, by the practice of justice and right
eousness, by the observance of a pure worship, and
the avoidance of every kind of wrong.|| Nor let the
devout man of a different blood, who would take up

* Is. liv. 11-17. f Comp. 2 Sam. vii. 12-17. % Is. Iv. 1-5.
§ lv. 6-13. || lvi. 1,2.

XLVL] ISAIAH XL. 1.- LXVI. 24. 261
his lot with the chosen race, suppose himself excluded
from its blessings. They are intended to be largely
dispensed ; and the devout of every lineage, who will
" do Jehovah's will, observe his Sabbaths, and hold
fast his covenant," shall be admitted to a share in the
inheritance of his own sons and daughters. Such
disciples also shall be gathered to the returned exiles
of Israel, and " their burnt offerings too shall be ac
cepted on his altar," till fitly " his house shall be called
a house of prayer for all nations." *
But there is occasion for remonstrance still, and
reason for alarm. When God-provoking sins come in
among the people, like devouring beasts, many of
the teachers, intent on their own pleasures, are but
dumb, blind, and drowsy guardians of the sheepfold.f
While good men, mercifully taken away " because of
the prevailing evils," lie down to their last rest in
sacred peace, others pass thoughtlessly on in their
career of wickedness. J " Come hither," says Jehovah,
" come hither, and receive your rebuke, ye dupes of the
arts of the diviner, ye licentious devotees of false, for
eign gods. Do you think, rebellious and false as you
are, to deride and defy me 1 Can I look on in silence
while you take a part in the lewd and cruel rites of
the religions of the heathen ; while in public and pri
vate you set up the monuments, and yield to the se
ductions, and follow the vile practices, of idolatrous
worship ; while it has seemed that as long as life was
in you you would not be discouraged in this vain
pursuit ? Can I see such things, and be at rest 1 §
* Is. lvi. 3-8. — "Let not the eunuch say," &c. (3); that is, him
who has hitherto been barren in goodness ; comp. liv. 1 .
t lvi. 9-12.
X Ivii. 1, 2.
$ Ivii. 3-10. — "Thou goest to the king with oil, and takest much
precious perfume" (9); probably for !]Sn, "the king," we should read

262 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
Who is it that thou hast feared to the extent of for
getting me, because I have been forbearing, and not
forced myself upon thy notice \ But now I show thee
how righteous thy works have been all this while
[rather, how unrighteous], and how unprofitable.
Look to ' thy host to deliver thee ' ; thou shalt find
how vain will be such a trust.
' But he that putteth his trust in me
Shall possess the land,
And shall inherit my holy mountain.' — Ivii. 13.
The journey homeward for my wayfarers shall be safe
and unobstructed. For great as I am, I am not inex
orable, but the lowly and penitent are my delight.
Punishment, though deserved, is my strange work, and
I gladly withdraw my hand. To the incorrigibly
wicked there can be no peace. He carries the ele
ments of disturbance and distress within him. But
the humble and the contrite, far and near, shall find
me placable and true." *
The writer's mind seems to vibrate between patriotic
joy and anxiety, and his thoughts to be divided be
tween bright anticipations of his people's approach
ing greatness, and fears that they may yet forfeit it
by their ingratitude and misconduct. And the two
chapters next following, especially the latter, appear
to have been written at a time of uneasiness and dis
couragement.
}So, " Moloch " ; comp. Lev. xviii. 21 ; xx. 2 ; Amos v. 26 : Zeph. i. 5.
Others understand the words as referring to the Israelitish passion for being
admitted to the superstitious observances of other realms, and refer for il
lustration to Ezek. xvi. 18, 19, 26-29. — " Thou sendest thine ambassadors
afar, thou debasest thyself even unto hell" (ibid.) ; seeking out false re
ligions wherever they may be found, thou fearest no depth of shame in that
infamous pursuit.
* Is. Ivii. 11-21. — "I create the fruit of the lips, peace," &c. (19); that
is, It is I who create occasions for praise and thanksgiving ; comp. Heb.
xiii. 15.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1.- LXVI. 24. 263
He feels called upon to " cry aloud and not spare,
to lift up his voice like a trumpet, and show his peo
ple their transgression, and the house of Jacob their
sins." It seems probable that they had been keep
ing a special fast, to entreat their Divine Friend to
overrule to their enlargement and benefit the great
revolution they had been witnessing. And they won
der that he had not sooner vouchsafed an answer to
their prayer. But their monitor tells them that they
must expect no such favor while they stain their
most solemn religious services with hypocrisy. They
do not approach God's throne of mercy with pure
hearts and hands. While they " pursue their pleas
ures, and oppress their laborers, and fast in strife
and contention," it is in vain for them to expect that
" their voice will be heard on high." A fast consisting
in mere outward austerities is no " day acceptable to
Jehovah."* The fast acceptable to him is that of
pure-hearted worshippers, of those who shun and re
sist every kind of oppression, who share their meal
or their morsel with the hungry, who clothe the naked
and give the friendless outcast a shelter, "f" When the
people fast thus, they shall no longer have cause for
complaint that Jehovah does not hear. When thus
they cry, he shall be prompt to say " Lo, here I am."
Then " their wounds shall speedily be healed " ; then
" their light shall shine upon darkness " ; then strength
and plenty shall be theirs, " the ancient desolations "
be rebuilt, and " the ruins of many generations " re
stored. If with an honest and hearty observance they
will keep the Sabbaths, they shall be made " to ride
upon the high places of the earth," and to " enjoy the
inheritance of Jacob, their father." Such is Jehovah's
* Is. lviii. 1-5. ' t lviii- 6»7-

264 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
immutable decree and will.* It knows no change in
itself, but it always has contemplated, and it now de
pends upon, conditions to be observed by the other
party. If the national prosperity is not yet restored,
this is not God's fault, but the people's.
" Behold, Jehovah's hand is not shortened, that he cannot save,
Nor is his ear grown dull, that he cannot hear ;
But your iniquities have separated you from your God,
And your sins have hidden his face from you, that he doth not
hear."— lix. 1, 2.
Their hands are polluted with blood, and their lips
with falsehoods. They cruelly wrong each other with
unrighteous litigation, with fraudulent overreaching,
and with violent deeds.
" Therefore is judgment far from us,
And deliverance doth not overtake us.
We look for light, and behold, darkness !
For brightness, and behold, obscurity ! " — lix. 9.
It is the sins of which we are too certainly and too
painfully conscious, that " testify against us," and
forbid the blessings which our benefactor is waiting
and longing to bestow."]" But that " equity standeth
afar off," and " truth is not to be found " among his
people, is no reason why they should not be found in
Him. He always wears them as a breastplate and
helmet, and if, because of them, he must " repay wrath
to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies," and
the visitations of his displeasure must rest upon such
" like a river straitened in its course, which a strong
wind driveth along," so, too, because of those same
attributes, the deserving shall be graciously dealt with.
" Yet shall a redeemer come to Zion,
For them, that turn from their transgressions in Jacob, saith Jehovah."
— lix. 20.
* Is. lviii. 8-14. t lix. 3 - 14.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. 265
They shall imbibe his spirit, and welcome and learn
his truth, and it shall abide with them and their sons,
and their sons' sons, for ever and ever*
What follows is in a more exulting strain. Judah
is called upon to arouse herself to her high destiny,
and enjoy that light which Jehovah has made to rise
upon her, while gross darkness still envelops the na
tions. But they too shall share in the light which she
sends forth, and flock to the glorious spot where it is
kindled. The tribute of distant climes shall flow in
upon her, till she shall tremble with joy, and her
heart "swell with delight." Freighted with gold
and frankincense, chanting praises to Jehovah as they
come, the Arabian caravans shall throng to her gates.
Kedar and Nebaioth shall send their flocks to bleed,
acceptable offerings, upon her altars. Like elouds
that cover the sky, like doves that wing their swift
way to their cotes, shall worshippers crowd the roads
to her shrine. The commerce of distant nations shall
bring thither its most precious tribute. " The sons
of the stranger " shall build up the walls of Jerusa
lem, and Gentile kings wait upon the work. All
circumstances lately existing shall be reversed, and in
the time of reconciliation Jehovah will be as munifi
cently propitious as in the time of estrangement he
was justly severe."]" So vast shall be the confluence
of proselytes and of oblations, of kings and of their
retinues, (for homage or annihilation shall then be
the only choice,) that all night, as well as all day, the
city gates will have to stand wide open. Jehovah's
sanctuary, the place where his own feet rest, will be
garnished with all precious woods, " the glory of Leba-
* Is. lix. 15-21. — " They in the west," and " they in the rising of the
sun" (19) ; that is, they who dwell in all quarters whatsoever.
f Ix. 1 - 10.
vol. iii. 23

266 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
non." There shall the children of those who had
oppressed Israel come and bow down in lowly rever
ence. " Forsaken and hated " once, she shall now be
" an everlasting glory." Coerced by " the Mighty
One of Jacob," nations and their kings shall feed
her plenty, and nurse her greatness. Every thing
frail and common about her shall be superseded by
what is most permanent and rich. Iron shall take
the place of stones, and silver of iron. Her rulers shall
be pure uprightness and beneficence ; an undisturbed
tranquillity shall reign throughout her coasts, so that
she may inscribe Safety upon her walls, and Glory
upon the gates through which the traveller enters
them. The luminaries of heaven, the rising and set
ting sun, the waxing and waning moon, give a light
all too mean to be permitted to fall upon her splen
dors. Jehovah himself shall be to her a perpetual
light, never setting and never clouded, and her God
the radiance she basks in, dispelling every shade of
grief or fear. Righteous to a man, without excep
tion worthy of their great destiny, God's people
shall " possess their land for ever," flourishing there,
for his glory, with the vigor of a scion planted by
his own hand. The pangs of hope deferred are over;
the weak is to become strong, and the small in num
bers populous, in that near time which Jehovah means
to hasten.*
The Lord Jehovah, says the writer, has provi
dentially fitted and disposed me to proclaim to his
afflicted people the approaching happy change in their
condition, to soothe their troubled minds, to announce
to them the liberation at hand, to exhort them to put
crowns instead of ashes on their heads, to array them-
* Is. Ix. 11-22.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. 267
selves in " the garment of praise instead of the spirit
of heaviness." So doing, they shall attract attention
as a thriving grove, planted for Jehovah's glory* It
is to be their happy office to restore the ruined state,
and rebuild the demolished cities. While they shall
be the honored priests and servants of Jehovah, they
shall be sustained by the wealth of subject nations,
and the sons of those who had oppressed them shall
do their menial offices."]" The affluence of their com
ing prosperity shall be in proportion to the extremity
of their past distress. Because Jehovah loves right
eousness, he will eternally reward and exalt the right
eous. " Their race shall be illustrious amongst the na
tions," and all men be brought to acknowledge them
as " a race which Jehovah hath blessed." J Well may
they rejoice and exult in him, who hath covered them
with the mantle of deliverance, as with the attire of a
nuptial festivity, and made freedom and renown to
spring up, like plants shooting from fertile ground.§
The theme is too vast and joyful, he continues, to
admit of silence, even while the great consummation
delays. The prosperity and glory of Israel shall be
such as to attract the notice and admiration of all na
tions and kings. Only new names of honor, which
Jehovah shall bestow, can worthily describe her. She
shall be a royal crown and chaplet in her Maker's
hand. Instead of the Desolate and the Forsaken,
names of wedded dignity shall be her's, and her chil
dren and her God rejoice in the honored bride. || The
watchmen on her towers shall sing praises all day and
all night, and weary heaven with prayers till she is
made the glory of the whole earth. The word and

* Is. Ixi. 1-3. f Ixi. 4-6. J Ixi. 7-9.
§ Ixi. 10, 11. || lxii. 1-5.

268 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
oath of Jehovah are her assurance that her harvests
and vintages, so long the spoil of the heathen stranger,
shall henceforward be for her own gathering and use.
Let the way be cleared and made smooth for the re
turning people. Let the standard of the Lion of Judah
float at the head of the long procession of the tribes.
Jehovah is proclaiming, till the ends of the earth echo
the sound, that he is himself conducting back his
emancipated people, henceforward to be called " The
cherished, the not forsaken city."*
Among other patriotic dreams of future greatness
for his nation, the writer flatters himself that the
hope of a bloody vengeance, cherished from the na
tion's infancy in every Israelitish bosom,. will be sig
nally executed upon Edom, — Edom, the Arabian ma
rauder, the base progeny of Esau, sometimes the suc
cessful, sometimes the conquered, but always the in
veterate enemy of the God-favored line of Isaac's
younger son. In the visions of his fiercely excited
mind, he sees a sequel of the deliverance wrought for
his chosen by Him that is " mighty to save." He sees
the future Messiah, the warlike monarch of Israel,
marching homewards in magnificent triumph from
Edom, his garments soaked and dripping with the
blood of its slaughtered people. The champion has
been wading among the heaps of slain, like one who
treads on the heaped clusters of grapes in a wine-
vat, and the purple that he wears is the dye of their
life-blood. He has wrought the ruin with his own
resistless might. No foreign alliance gave him aid.
But undismayed by this, his own rage proved enough
to sustain him, while he " crushed the people in his
fury, and spilled their blood upon the ground." f
* Is. lxii. 6-12.
t Ixiii. 1-6. — Says Home, like others addicted to the same profound and

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. l.-LXVI. 24. 269
The remaining chapters bring to view with ani
mated repetition, and with some variety of represen
tation, the principal topics before presented in this
portion of the book. The writer proposes first to
vindicate and extol the past proceedings of Jehovah
with his people. Trusting that they were " children
that would not be false," " he took them up and bore
them all the days of old," and "in all their straits
they had no distress." But his parental hopes were
disappointed; "they rebelled, and grieved his holy
spirit ; then did he change himself into their enemy." *
His people, now afflicted by him for their sins, brought
to reflection and amendment by conquest and captivity,
recall sadly to mind the happy ancient times. Where is
he, they mournfully ask, that brought them out from
their former servitude under the wise conduct of Mo
ses, that led them safely with his guidance through the
deep and through the desert, and folded them in peace
in the promised land, " as the herd descendeth into the
valley " 1 Where are now, they ask, the Divine favor
and power that once protected and prospered them 1 Is
not Jehovah their father, nearer to them than Abra
ham or Jacob, the parents of their race 1 Why does
he abandon them to their perversity and its conse
quences % It was but a little while that they had en
joyed their independence ; " then their enemies tram-

judicious criticism, — " The deliverance of the Church from all her enemies
by the Great Redeemer, and the destruction of Antichrist and his followers,
are delineated in chap. Ixiii. 1-6, with unequalled pathos, energy, and sub
limity."—" Introduction," &c, Vol. IV. p. 164. He should have added,
" with unequalled perspicuity," for a set of words with a meaning more op
posite to that which he ascribes to them, it would not be easy to put to
gether. Lowth, whom Home commonly delights to follow, though pro
ceeding in the main on wrong principles of interpretation, shrank from such
broad absurdity as this.
* Is. Ixiii. 7 - 10.
23*

270 ISAIAH XL. 1.— LXVI. 24. [LECT.
pled upon their sanctuary." Better, it sometimes seems,
than that they should suffer such disappointment and
disgrace, would it have been for Jehovah never to
have ruled over them.* O that he would burst a pas
sage through the sky, and flash through like a blazing'
fire, to make the mountains and the nations " trem
ble at his presence," as of old when he wrought un
heard of deliverances for them that placed their trust
in him."]" But, as " he is the friend of those who joy
fully do righteousness," so his indignation pursues the
wicked, till they " are all withered, like a leaf, and their
sins, like a storm, have blown them away." He is now
hiding his face from his people Israel, because of their
perverse ingratitude.^ But let him be entreated to re
lent, and remember that, how unworthy soever, they
are the children of his own creation. Let him be
moved by the piteous sight of their sorrows, and
stay his avenging hand.§
" Thy holy cities have become a wilderness ;
Zion is become a wilderness ; Jerusalem a desolation.
Our holy and glorious house,
Where our fathers praised thee,
Is burned with fire,
And all our precious things are laid waste.
Wilt thou contain thyself at these things, O Jehovah,
Wilt thou keep silence, and still grievously afflict us? " — lxiv. 10- 12.
In the following chapter Jehovah is represented as
answering this prayer. He sets forth the long-suffer
ing forbearance, the parental indulgence, which he had
exercised towards his disobedient people. He had
been propitious, when they did not so much as seek
him. When they should have been suppliants to him
for pardon, he had stretched out his hands to them,
even while they multiplied their provocations, and
with hypocritical pretensions to sanctity only rendered

* Is. Ixiii. 11-19. f lxiv. 1-4. X 'xiv. 5-7. $ lxiv. 8-12.

XLVI] ISAIAH XL. l._ LXVI. 24. 271
more odious in his sight their abandonment to the
impious practices of their heathen neighbours. But
his patience is at length exhausted, and vengeance
long stayed must do its work. He is resolyed that
he " will pour the full recompense of their former
deeds into their bosom." * Yet his justice shall be as
reasonable and discriminating as it shall be exem
plary. "Thus saith Jehovah,
As when juice is found in a cluster,
Men say, ' Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it ' ;
So will I do, for the sake of my servants, and will not destroy the whole ;
I will cause a stem to spring forth from Jacob,
And from Judah a possessor of my mountains ;
My chosen shall possess the land,
And my servants shall dwell there.
And Sharon shall be a fold for flocks,
And the valley of Achor a resting-place for herds,
For my people that have sought me." — Ixv. 8-10.
The irreclaimably wicked of his people Jehovah
destines to the sword. They shall hunger and thirst,
while his servants eat and drink. They shall be
confounded, while his servants rejoice, and shriek and
howl for anguish of spirit, while his servants sing
aloud for gladness. His chosen shall abjure the ac
cursed name of their unworthy associates, and every
memorial of their detested existence be blotted from
the land."]" Within its happy borders every thing
shall be put upon a new footing. Novus sceclorum
nascitur ordo. Jerusalem shall be made " full of joy,
and her people full of gladness." " No more shall be
heard therein the voice of weeping and the cry of dis
tress." Life shall be lengthened out to its full term,
and the old age of the virtuous shall enjoy all the
vigor and elasticity of youth. The houses which God's
beloved build shall be for their own inhabitancy. Of
* Ts. Ixv. 1-7. t Ixv. 8-16.

272 ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24. [LECT.
the vineyards which they shall plant, they shall them
selves eat the fruit. The children to whom they give
life shall live to reward their cares. No disappoint
ment shall interrupt the blessedness of their God-
given prosperity.*
" Before they call, I will answer ;
And while they are yet speaking, I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
And the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
And dust shall be the food of the serpent.
They shall not hurt, nor destroy, in all my holy mouutain,
Saith Jehovah." — Ixv. 24, 25.
Jehovah, whose throne is heaven, whose footstool
the earth, who cannot be confined within any temple
that men can build for him to dwell in, who, on the
contrary, has himself raised the structure of the uni
verse, exercises a minute providence over the affairs of
the world. He visits with gracious protection the man
" of a contrite spirit, and who trembleth at his word,"
and his unerring wisdom sees through every vain de
vice of hypocrisy. There are men who bring sacrifi
ces, but would not shudder at murder ; there are those
who slay victims, but whose offerings, made in an im
penitent spirit, are but so many costly affronts to Je
hovah. They shall not delude nor escape him. He
" will choose their calamities, and what they dread he
will bring upon them," and for their insolent taunts
to God's children whom they have oppressed, confu
sion of face shall be their recompense."]" Listen to, the
sound which comes from far, from the city and tem
ple where the Most High has fixed his earthly seat.
It is " the voice of Jehovah, rendering recompense to
his enemies," and accomplishing his word of joyful
promise to his friends. His omnipotent purposes leap
to their execution. There can be no delay of the
* Is. ixv. 17-23. t Ixvi. 1-5.

XLVI.] ISAIAH XL. 1.- LXVI. 24. 273
birth, when he has said, Be born. He has willed the
glory of Jerusalem, and forthwith it shall burst upon
the admiring nations* He " will bring prosperity to
her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an
overflowing stream." He will care for and caress her
people, as a mother her unweaned child, while to his
enemies, who pollute themselves with idol practices, he
will " breathe forth his anger in a glowing heat, and
his rebuke in flames of fire." In short, the time for a
great retribution has come, and of a world-wide man
ifestation of the Divine glory. And while " the dead
bodies of the men that rebelled " shall be dishonorably
cast out, while " their worm shall not die, and their
fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an ab
horrence to all flesh," God's messengers shall go
everywhere abroad with the proclamations of his
sovereignty, and with invitations to his scattered
saints.f " And they shall bring all your brethren
From all the nations, an offering to Jehovah,
Upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and dromeda
ries,
To my holy mountain, Jerusalem, saith Jehovah,
As the sons of Israel bring their gifts
In pure vessels to the house of Jehovah.
And of them will I also take
For priests and for Levites, saith Jehovah.
For as the new heavens,
And the new earth, which I make,
Endure before me, saith Jehovah,
So shall your race and your name endure.
And it shall be, from new moon to new moon,
And from sabbath to sabbath,
That all flesh shall come and worship before me, saith Jehovah." — Ixvi. 20-23.
The Book of Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament
almost as often as that of the Psalms, and nearly twice
* Is. Ixvi. 6-11. t 'xvi. 12-24.

274

ISAIAH XL. 1. — LXVI. 24.

[LECT.

as often as any other book in the Old Testament col
lection.*

* If I have observed correctly, the following is about the number of quo
tations in the New Testament from the Books of the Old Testament re
spectively. In many cases, two or more quotations are of the same Old
Testament passage.

From the Psalms,

. 65 From Malachi,

4

" Isaiah, .

54

' Amos,

. 3

" Deuteronomy, .

. 28

' 2 Samuel,

2

" Exodus,

27 «

' 1 Kings, .

. 2

" Genesis, .

. 21 '

' Joel,

2

' ' Leviticus,

10 '

' Numbers,

" Proverbs, .

. 7

' 1 Samuel,

" Zechariah,

6 '

' Job,

" Hosea,

. 5 '

' Micah, .

" Jeremiah,
5 '
' Haggai,
" Habakkuk, ;
. 5
XLVII.] MICAH. 275

LECTURE XLVII.
MICAH, NAHUM, HABAKKUK, ZEPHANIAH, AND OBADIAH.
Birthplace and Age op Micah. — His Prophecies addressed to
both Kingdoms. — Threefold Division of the Book. — Threats
and Promises in the First Division. — Rebukes of Rulers and
Teachers in the Second, with a Prospect of Future Reforma
tion and Restoration. — Remarks on two Passages, commonly in
terpreted as Supernatural Predictions. — Jehovah represented
in the Third Division as speaking to the Earth and the Moun
tains. — Remonstrances, Rebukes, and Consolations. — Character
of Micah's Style of Thought and Composition. — Birthplace
and Age of Nahum. — Character and General Plan of his Book.
— Threats against Modern Nineveh, of a Fate similar to that
of the Ancient City, in Retribution of her Sins, and especially
of her Cruelties to the Chosen People. — Age and Contents of
the Book of Habakkuk. — Its Subject, the Conquests and Final
Overthrow of the Chaldees. — Its Form, a Dialogue, in the
First Two Chapters, between the Prophet and Jehovah, and in
the Third, an Ode, afterwards adapted to the Synagogue Ser
vice. — Age and Parentage of Zephaniah. — His Genius and
Style. — Division of his Book into Three Parts. — Threats
AGAINST THE JeWS AND AGAINST THEIR ENEMIES, AND PROSPECT OF
the Future Glory and Prosperity of Israel. — Age of Obadiah.
— Question respecting a Passage common to him and Jeremiah.
— Subject of his Prophecy, the destined Downfall of Edom.
In the inscription to his book, Micah is called " the
Morasthite." A town by the name of Mareshah, be
longing to the tribe of Judah, is mentioned in the
early history ; * and of this he was probably a native.
He is assigned in the inscription to " the days of Jo
tham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah," whose
* Josh. xv. 44 ; comp. 2 Chron. xi. 8 ; xiv. 9, 10.

276 MICAH. [LECT.
successive reigns extended from the year 759 to the
year 699 before the Christian era. But it is not safe,
as we have seen, to rely on these inscriptions, when
there is any internal evidence against them ; and it
has been urged with much force,* that there is noth
ing in what remains to us of Micah which is applica
ble to the times of Jotham, in whose reign, however,
it is very likely that the prophet was born, nor to the
times of Hezekiah, during which the prevailing sins
inveighed against by Micah were discountenanced and
suspended ; and that the part of the book contained in
the first two chapters does correspond well to the time
of Ahaz, and the rest to the time of Manasseh, Heze
kiah's successor, in whose reign Micah may well have
been living, if he was born under Jotham. In the
absence of clearer evidence, I would lay no stress upon
this view, though I conceive it is not without proba
bility. Micah addresses, in the same discourse, the two
kingdoms of Israel and Judah.f His book has been
very conveniently divided into three parts, beginning
respectively with the first, third, and sixth chapters.
The parts so separated each begin with a call upon
the people to hear, and each presents in the usual suc
cession the topics commonly produced in a prophetic
discourse ; namely, first, rebuke and warning, and
then encouragement to hope for better times.
The first two chapters, constituting the first division,
appear clearly enough to have been written while the
kingdom of the Ten Tribes yet retained its indepen
dence, or previously to the year 720 B. C. They rep
resent Jehovah, in a high strain of poetry, as coming

* See Bertholdt, " Einleitung," Th. 4, § 410.
f Mic. i. 6 ; iii. 1.

XLVII] MICAH. 277
forth from his dwelling-place, and advancing upon the
high places of the earth, while the mountains melt,
and the valleys cleave asunder, in his way. He comes,
it is said, " for the transgression of Jacob, and the sin
of the house of Israel." * Clothing his thoughts
under this imagery, (imagery which no one understands
literally, but which is not at all more bold than that
in which Isaiah describes Jehovah's appearance in the
temple,"]") the prophet goes on nearly to the close of
the passage threatening both nations with heavy judg
ments of God for the sins of idolatry, violence, and
fraud by which they are provoking him. The trans
gressions of Israel are blazoned forth at its capital,
Samaria. The seat of Judah's arrogance is Jerusalem.
Samaria for its sins shall be made desolate, " a place
for the planting of a vineyard." The stones which
compose her hill-built citadel shall be tumbled down
into the valley. Her idols shall be destroyed, and
with them all the dedicated things which the wages
of wickedness have brought into their temples. J
But not for this sorrow, says the prophet, do I most
deeply grieve. There is a nearer cause of lamenta
tion. The " mortal wound " of Samaria " extendeth
to Judah ; it reacheth to the gate of my own people,
even to Jerusalem."§ Let not her disgrace be pub
lished to the stranger ; but let all the cities of Ju
dah, and among them especially Lachish, whose errors
were " the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion,"
mourn for her and their own lost prosperity, and
for the children of their love, destined to go into
captivity. || For their sins are their afflictions sent.
* Mic. i. 2 - 5. t Is- vi- X Mic- *• 6> ?• § i. 8, 9.
|| i. 10-16. — Ben-Aphrah (comp. Josh, xviii. 23), Zaanan (comp.
Josh. xv. 37), Beth-e?el (comp. Zach. xiv. 5), Maroth (comp. Josh. xv.
59), Lachish (comp. Josh. xv. 39), and Adullam (comp. 2 Chron. xi. 7)
were cities within the limits of the southern kingdom.
VOL. III. 24

278 MICAH. [LECT.
For their iniquities, devised at night to be executed by
day, for their covetousness, violence, and fraud, does
Jehovah "meditate evil" against them, — evil which
he will visit with such severity as to cause them to
lament that they are " utterly laid waste," and that not
a single definite portion of their country remains their
own.* They are impatient of the remonstrances of
the prophet who predicts such woes, and would rather
listen to one who should " follow wind, and invent
falsehood." But the truth, painful as it may be, is
their needful medicine. Unless they hear it, " the
shame will not depart." It is not Jehovah's causeless
resentment that pursues them. He is always " kind
to him that walketh uprightly." But it is their own
injustice and impiety that have polluted the land, and
" given it over to utter destruction.""]" The last two
verses of the chapter present the consolations with
which such passages of remonstrance commonly close.
Though, surrounded by their enemies, they will be
like a flock in its fold thrown into consternation by
spoilers without, Jehovah will still be their shepherd,
and lead them out in safety through the midst of the
ravagers.J The second division, or poem, is of the same con
struction as the former ; but the parts are here found
in quite different proportions, the language of expos
tulation, rebuke, and menace being continued only
through one chapter, and that of "encouragement
through the other two. There is, I think, in this por
tion, no recognition of the northern kingdom as still
existing, for, though the " house of Israel " is spoken
of, it is identified with Zion and Jerusalem.§
Being governed by wicked rulers, and instructed by
* Mic. ii. 1-5. f ii- 6- H. J ii. 12, 13. § iii. 8 - 10.

XLVII.] MICAH. 279
false teachers, the holy nation, it is said, is fast going
to destruction, and doomed to be a prey to its enemies.
The leaders of Israel lead only to evil. The ministers
of justice are themselves cruelly unjust. They shall
reap of the fruit of their own devices. When they
plead for the compassion which they have not exer
cised, they shall plead in vain. God will execute jus
tice without mercy on them who have shown no
mercy.* The teachers, too, who deceive the people,
and persecute any who tell them the truth, shall be
ashamed and silenced when the event proves the fal
sity of their predictions, and " hide their faces because
there is no answer from God.""|" One voice, however,
will be " full of uprightness and courage, to declare to
Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin," and to
proclaim that the unjust ruler and the mercenary
priest and prophet, who delude the people by the
boast that Jehovah is in the midst of them, and there
fore they are safe, will but delude them to their ruin,
through the forfeiture of Jehovah's love. J
•' Because of them shall Zion be ploughed as a field,
And Jerusalem become heaps of stones,
And the mountain of the temple like the heights of a forest. — iii. 12.
But so it shall not always be. The favor of God
shall at a future day be restored to his people, and Je
rusalem shall become the central seat of a wise, power
ful, peaceable, and beneficent empire ; § an empire that,
relying on its King, Jehovah, and watched, multiplied,
and strengthened by his providence, shall never come to
an end.|| Now Zion may indeed well lament, for with-

* Mic. iii. 1-4. t I"- 5"7- + i»- 8-11.
§ iv. 1-4. — Here occurs the passage which has been remarked on as
found in Isaiah. See above, pp. 183 - 185.
|| iv. 5-8. — By Migdal-Edar, the sheep-tower (comp. Nehemiah iii. 1,
32), is probably meant one of the principal gates of Jerusalem, used by
synecdoche for the city.

280 MICAH. [LECT.
out trustworthy leaders, and surrounded by angry ene
mies, great affliction is her lot.* But it is to be suc
ceeded by as signal prosperity. Her God designs to
give her in his good time a resistless strength against
her enemies."]" When their power is most threatening
and their arrogance most insolent, there shall appear
from the ancient line of David, and from Bethlehem
Ephratah, the seat of his royal race, the great deliver
er, who "shall stand and rule in the strength of Je
hovah," and, marshalling " the residue of his brethren,"
roll back the tide of Assyrian war upon the borders
and the palaces of Nimrod. J Under his conduct,
Israel shall stand in unapproached glory among the
nations, rejoicing them with its influences as the dew
does the grass, and lording it over them " as a lion
among the beasts of the forest, and as a young lion
among flocks of sheep, who, when he assaulteth, tread
eth down and teareth, and none can deliver." § This
prosperity shall, however, be accompanied with a
thorough purification of the land itself, which shall
be made to renounce its sorceries and its idols. Then
Jehovah will be its guardian, and it may dispense with
its fortresses. ||
There are two passages in this division which call
for particular notice.
" Now shalt thou go forth from the city, and dwell in the field ;
Thou shalt go even to Babylon ;
There shalt thou be delivered ;
Jehovah shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies." — iv. 10.
From this language it has been inferred that Micah
was supernaturally acquainted beforehand with the
deportation of the Jewish people to Babylon under
Nebuchadnezzar. I propose three or four considera
tions affecting the probability of such a conclusion.
* Mic. iv. 9-11. f iv- l2, 13. J v. 1-6.
v v. 7-9. || v. 10-15.

XLVII.] MICAH. 281
It has been suggested that the words, " Thou shalt
go even to Babylon," which are the main foundation of
the inference, are an interpolated gloss ; and it must
be owned that this Avould be no unlikely instance
of the introduction of such glosses as we have seen
are reasonably to be expected, and actually exist, in
these writings. After the Babylonish captivity had
occurred, a possessor of a copy of Micah, who inter
preted him as having in the context referred to that
event in more general terms, would very naturally add
the words, " Thou shalt go to Babylon," as a marginal
exposition ; and, once so placed, it would only be in
the common course of transcription, if they found
their way subsequently into the text.
But I prefer to lay no stress upon this idea. I sug
gest that it would be a very natural and well author
ized use of language, if the Jews should speak of go
ing to Babylon, intending to convey the more general
sense of going to a distant place, as the Romans
spoke of going to the "ultima Thule," Babylon is,
in fact, as far as I have observed, the most distant
place from their territory of which the Jews were
used to speak in the time of their independence ; at
least, the most distant in the direction of their formi
dable national enemies.* And on this supposition,
there is nothing more peculiar in the threat of being
made to go to Babylon, than in that of coming under
the dominion of a foreign invader. They are equiv
alent. Again, at the time when Micah wrote this passage,
which is uncertain, Babylon was either one of the
capitals of the Assyrian king, or it had a kind of in
dependence. In either case, the expression is account-

* Comp. 2 Kings xx. 14.
24*

282 MICAH. v [LECT.
ed for without the supposition of supernatural fore
sight. Assuming the former, to say, " Thou shalt go
to Babylon," is only to say, Yielding like thy sister
Israel to the Assyrian arms, thou shalt follow her into
captivity. Assuming the latter, it is an expression on
the part of Micah of that same apprehension of hos
tile designs on the part of the king- of Babylon, which
was actually expressed by Micah's contemporary, Isa
iah, when that prince sent an embassy to Hezekiah,
with a message of congratulation on his recovery.*
Once more ; there is some reason for supposing
that Micah survived till the time of Manasseh. The
rebukes in a portion of his book certainly correspond
well with what is recorded of Manasseh in the histo
ry,"]" while it is not so easy to reconcile it with any
thing we know of Hezekiah's times. On this suppo
sition, the mention of Babylon is most distinctly ac
counted for. Micah then was speaking of an event
which occurred under his own notice. Manasseh,
doubtless attended by some of his nobles, was actually
carried a prisoner to Babylon in the year 677 B. C,
and subsequently restored to his home and throne,^
agreeably to Micah's statement at the close of the
verse under our notice.
In the fifth chapter, we read as follows : —
" Thou, Bethlehem Ephratah,
Who art too small to be among the thousands of Judah,
Out of thee shall come forth from me a ruler of Israel,
Whose origin is from the ancient age, from the days of old." — v. 2.
Upon this I make no other than the obvious re-

* 2 Kings xx. 12.
f Comp. Mic. vi. 16 -vii/ 6, with 2 Chron. xxxiii. 3-9. Mic. vi. 7
has been thought to contain a reference to Manasseh's crime recorded in
2 Chron. xxxiii. 6.
X Comp. 2 Chron. Xxxiii. 11-13.

XLVII.] MICAH. 283
mark, that whoever looked for a prince of the line of
David expected him to come from Bethlehem Ephra-
tah, which was the family seat of that race. It would
perhaps be enough to justify the language, that David
was born there, and accordingly it was, in a familiar
use of such phrases, the place from which his descen
dants originated, as we should say even of a person
born among ourselves, but whose ancestors were from
abroad, that he was of foreign, or, more particularly,
that he was of Parisian origin. But with a Jew the
case was much stronger, which demanded the use of
such language. With a Jew, by a fundamental law
of the nation, landed property descended almost ina
lienably from father to son, and, accordingly, whoever
looked for a son of David looked to Bethlehem as his
birthplace. At the beginning of the sixth chapter, we have a
context illustrating the view which has been hereto
fore presented of the figurative language in which Je
hovah is represented as speaking* The prophet de
clares what Jehovah speaks, and he calls upon the
mountains and the strong foundations of the earth to
hear it. If the former is literal, so is the latter. If
the former is not literal in such instances as this, no
more can it be maintained to be so, ex vi termini, in
cases where Jehovah is represented as addressing the
prophet. In this chapter, the prophet first represents the
Lord as expostulating with the people on the ground
of his well-known mercies to them in ancient times,"]"
and then, putting the language of penitence into their
mouths, he instructs them that it is by a spiritual
rather than a ritual obedience that that penitence is
* See Vol. II. pp. 390, 415-417, 432. f Mic- vi- 1-5'

284 MICAH. [LECT.
to be testified.* The chapter concludes in a vehement
strain of rebuke and menace."|"
The prophet proceeds to the close, mostly in his
own character. He laments that he can no more find
a good man than one can find fruit after a gleaning.
All are corrupt and perfidious. One may not trust a
friend, a brother, or a wife. The closest ties of kin
dred are only the most dangerous snares. But I, he
says, will trust in that unfailing friend, " the God
of my salvation." $ And then follow three verses, in
which he speaks in the character of his humbled nation,
or, as I would rather say, recommends to his nation
the penitent but confiding language which it ought to
use.§ He bids it hope a coming day of brilliant pros
perity, to succeed its impending disasters,|| and con
cludes with an address to God, expressive of assured
trust in his compassion for the future, sustained by the
remembrance of his bountiful goodness in past times.
Let the tranquil sway of Judah, he says, be extended
beyond the Euphrates, to Bashan and Gilead, as of
old, and let God's wonderful greatness be displayed
for her, as in the dark days of her exodus from Egyp
tian servitude. Then all the now arrogant nations
shall " be ashamed of all their might," and " come
trembling from their strongholds " to lick the dust
before the feet of the God of Israel, a God as unmatch
ed in compassion as in power. ^f
" He retaineth not his anger for ever,
For he delighteth in mercy.
He will again have compassion on us,
He will blot out our iniquities ;
Yea, thou wilt cast all our sins into the depths of the sea !
Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob,
And mercy to Abraham,
Which thou swarest to our fathers from the days of old."
— vii. 18-20.

* Mic. vi. 6-8. f vi- 9-16. J vii. 1-7.
$ vii. 8-10. || vii. 11-13. Ivii. 14-17.

XLVII.] NAHUM. 285
I conclude this brief sketch of the Book of Micah
by remarking that his style of composition is nervous,
rapid, and. concise, not unlike that of Hosea, though
not so obscure, while in the animation and sublimity
of some passages, and the grace and delicacy of others,
he scarcely falls behind Isaiah. His ethical views are
of a peculiarly high character for a writer under the
old dispensation.
Nahum is called, in the inscription to his book,
" the Elkoshite." There was known to antiquity a
village of the name of Elkosh in Assyria, and another
in Galilee. But the former was probably named from
the latter, by a colony of captive Jews who had settled
there, in like manner as our New England ancestors
called many of their settlements after places familiar
to them in the parent country. And notwithstanding
a comparatively modern tradition, which naturally
enough grew up after the Galilean Elkosh was forgot
ten, but the Assyrian still stood, there seems no good
reason for doubting, especially when the vehement
character of the book is considered, that the Galilean
village was the prophet's birthplace, from which it is
probable he had removed after the Assyrian invasion,
and fixed his residence in the southern kingdom.
The work is one of great vigor, finish, and beauty.
In its subject, the coming downfall of the Assy
rian capital, and the manner of treating it, no care
ful reader fails to see the expression of the burning
indignation of a Jew against the oppressors of his
nation. There is a just God, he says, and such bar
barities as that nation has practised cannot fail to meet
their punishment. Proud and insolent as Assyria
now is, a dreadful doom is written against her. Her
own time cannot fail to come, to drink of the bitter

286 NAHUM. [LECT.
cup she has filled to the brim for others. Hostile
horsemen and chariots are yet to madden in her broad
places ; her villages to be devoured by the sword ; her
matrons to be borne, smiting on their breasts, into
shameful captivity; her children to be dashed in pie
ces at the top of all the streets. Whether what is
called the Israelitish captivity under Shalmaneser had
already taken place when Nahum wrote, we are una
ble to say, as we have no express information concern
ing the period when he lived,* nor are we able to set
tle it with exactness from any language in his book.
But it seems sufficiently clear that he wrote after the
Assyrian ravages in Israel had begun.
Some writers, on account of language in the second
chapter"]" understood to refer to circumstances of the
overthrow of the old Assyrian empire, as preserved by
Diodorus Siculus,t have been of opinion that this
chapter predicts the fall of Nineveh at that time, and
the third chapter another destruction at a period more
remote. But this seems to me not only to embarrass
and confuse the scheme and date of the book, but to
throw out of view the whole force and point of the al
lusions. Nahum makes those references to the past,
for the sake of greater vividness in the description of
what he threatens as future. Nineveh, says he, is to
fall again, under circumstances as dreadful as attended
its fall before. Its swelling river will again make
breaches in its walls for a besieging army to enter
* The reference in iii. 10 to a destruction of Thebes as having already
taken place, affords inadequate help ; though there are some reasons for
thinking that it was taken by Shalmaneser (comp. Rosenmuller, " Comment.
in Nahum.," ad loc), and Tartan may have taken it in the expedition spoken
of in Isaiah xx. Either of these dates would place its capture not far from
that capture of Samaria which occasioned Nahum's indignation against the
Assyrians. f Nah. ii. 7- 12. J " Biblioth. Hist.," Lib. II. capp. 25-27.

XLVII.] NAHUM. 287
through, and again its palaces and fortresses will burn.
As far as respects the latter capture of the city, of
which Nahum is speaking, this is poetical embellish
ment. When Nineveh did fall, as all warlike cities
sooner or later must, we know nothing of its having
been entered a second time by a breach made in this
particular manner.
The plan of the book of Nahum is the .most simple
and perspicuous possible. The first chapter contains
his exposition of those attributes of God, which assure
him that proud evil-doers like the Assyrians will not
be suffered to go unpunished. If Jehovah is slow to
anger, he says, yet he is great in power, and the guilty
shall by no means finally escape him. If his ways
are mysterious, they are firm, and sure, and terrible.*
He is as compassionate to the distressed, as he is for
midable to the proud ; and he will assuredly afflict
with prompt and remediless calamity the ravagers who
have afflicted his people."]" Let Judah, lately distressed
and affrighted, return to the regular observance of her
religious rites, for no more shall the oppressor disturb
or threaten her. The ferocious power of Nineveh
must fall under the visitations of her Divine Protector ;
a mightier enemy will be raised up against that proud
city ; X all her precautions will give her no security ;
her defenders shall turn cowards, her treasures be
spoiled, and her ruin and shame complete ; § den of
devouring lions as she has been, she is to be unten
anted and levelled with the ground, and her rich plun
der and her fearful fame are to be no more.|| Now,
indeed, though a scene of falsehood and violence, she
is a scene of luxury, gayety, activity, and power.
But the vengeance which her impurities and her
* Nah. i. 2-6. f >• 7_14- t i« 15. -ii. 4.
§ ii. 5-10. || ii. 11-13.

288 HABAKKUK. [LECT.
treacherous public policy have defied is but suspended,
to come at last in unmitigated and unsolaced rigor.*
The fate which had overtaken powerful and well-
guarded Thebes is one day to be hers."|" Her people
are to be timid fugitives ; her fortresses to fall, as if of
themselves, into the besieger's hands ; treachery shall
open her gates, and fire consume them ; her merchants
will rob her, and her captains will disappear, like
swarms of insects, which wait only long enough for
the sun to dry their wings, and give them power to
take their flight ; her nobles will sleep, and their pan
ic-stricken followers refuse to be assembled. In short,
an irrevocable sentence has gone forth against Nine
veh, and a sentence not only unregretted, but rejoiced
in by all who hear of it ; for who is there that Nine
veh has not wronged % %
The time of Habakkuk is quite uncertain. He has
been placed by different writers at all the periods from
the reign of Hezekiah down to the first years of the Jew
ish captivity. Thus much only can be affirmed, which
the subject of his work sufficiently shows, — that he
lived as late as the time when the Babylonians became
troublesome enemies to the Jews, and had at least
entered largely on that course of oppressions which
reached its height in the sack of their capital cvity.
In the first four verses of the first chapter Habak
kuk addresses a remonstrance to God on account of
his suffering unrighteous and violent men to disturb
the repose of his people. How long, says he, wilt
thou refuse to hear ? How long shall I be permitted
to see nothing but injury, lawlessness, tyranny, and
strife 1 § Then he introduces God as replying, that, in
* Nah. iii. 1-7. t «*• 8-10.
J iii. 11-19. § Hab. i. 2-4.

XLVII.] HABAKKUK. 289
judgment for his people's faithlessness, heavy calami
ties have been decreed against them. He has himself
given to the rapacious and irresistible Chaldees a com
mission to execute a severe retribution upon the rebel
lious race, in doing which they will exceed all bounds
of moderation, trusting in that strength which they
vainly think their own God has given them.* But,
the prophet resumes, surely thou wilt not permit these
miseries to last for ever. Thou art of purer eyes than
that thou canst look on evil, and therefore thou hast
raised up the Chaldean to chastise us. But canst thou
bear his wickedness, any more than ours, which he
has been thine instrument to punish 1 Canst thou
overlook his impieties, his injustice, his presumption,
and his pride'? is he to be permitted to go on for
ever % f
Thus I spoke, says he, while I took a survey of the
enormous wrongs which were inflicted on our fated
nation, — while I occupied my station, while I stood
upon my watch-tower, and waited to see what he would
reply to my remonstrance. J And I seemed to hear
him answer me thus : — " What I am going to tell you
write down, for sooner or later what I shall say will
surely come to pass. Behold, the soul of your enemy,
being perverse, is infatuated with pride, to its ruin.
But the just shall live and prosper through his trust
in me.§ A gloomy destiny is in store for the arro
gant Chaldean. Greedy as you now see him of the
spoils of all nations, all the nations which he has
plundered shall yet exult over his fall. They shall say,
Woe to the spoiler ! for the nations which he robbed
are in their turn to spoil him.|| Woe to the covetous
* Hab. i. 5-11. ji-13-!7- J ii. 1. § ii. 2-4.
|| ii. 5-8; comp. Is. xiv. 4 et seq., which Habakkuk seems to have had
in his mind.
VOL. III. 25

290 HABAKKUK. [LECT.
conqueror ! The very beams and stones of the house
which shelters the family he labored to aggrandize
are uttering their cry for vengeance.* Woe to him
who cemented the foundations of his cities with blood !
Fire is to consume the cities of his pride, and the
monuments of his greatness will come to nothing, that
the nations may acknowledge the Lord's avenging
hand.f Woe to him who enticed others to license
and shame ! His own impotent and abandoned shame
is manifest, and for the chalice of wantonness which he
offered, God's cup of plagues is poured upon his ex
posed head.J Hunted like wild beasts, the same vio
lence which the Chaldees exercised towards the Israel
ites shall be exerted against themselves. Their idols
shall have no power to save them. The deaf, mute,
and motionless wood and stone have no breath. But
Jehovah sits supreme in his holy temple, and before
him all the earth should be dumb." §
In the third chapter, the prophet breaks out into
a song of triumphant thanksgiving for the prospect
which has been opened to him of deliverance for Is
rael and retribution upon its enemies. " I have heard,"
he says, " O Lord, with awe what thou hast promised.
Fail not to fulfil thy word, and show that, however thy
displeasure may burn, thou dost never forget thy prom
ised mercies to thy people." || Then, in a magnificent
lyric strain, he reverts to deliverances which God had
wrought for them in the early period of their history,
confirming his faith that they will not now be deserted.
He brings to view the sublime scenes of the giving
« Hab. ii. 9-11.
t ii. 12 - 14 ; comp. Mic. iii. 10 ; Jer. li. 58 ; Is. xi. 9, which last Habak
kuk appears to copy.
X ii. 15, 16. § ii. 17-30. II iii. 2.

XLVII.] ZEPHANIAH. 291
of the law upon Sinai ; * the heaven-guided passage
of the tribes through the desert ; f the consternation
that seizes the neighbouring heathen at their ap
proach ; X the miraculous passages over the Red Sea
and the Jordan ; § the victory of Joshua at Gibeon ; ||
and the series of triumphs by which Canaan became
the home of the children of Jacob.^[ "When I heard
thy purposes of vengeance," he says, referring, as I
think, to the threats he had uttered in Jehovah's name,**
" I was overpowered with desperate dismay. f j- But I
am reassured, and in the worst of times, in the last ex
tremity of adversity and want, I can no longer admit
any sentiment but a cheerful trust." XX
Habakkuk, like Ezekiel, repeats from earlier writers,
but without that prophet's habit of amplification. His
third chapter appears to have been adopted, in later
times, for a use for which it was singularly fit, in the
synagogue service. To this circumstance we are to
ascribe the first and last periods of the chapter, which,
it needs not be said, can scarcely have belonged to
Habakkuk's composition.
Zephaniah's age is declared in the inscription to be
that of King Josiah, and the contents of the book
accord with this statement. Whether he lived early
or late in Josiah's reign has been made a question.
On the one hand, it has been argued (not satisfacto
rily, I conceive),§§ that his censures of prevailing idol-
* Hab. iii. 3, 4; comp. Gen. xiv. 6; Numb. x. 12; xiii. 3, 26; Deut.
xxxiii. 2.
f iii. 5,6; comp. Numb. xi. 33; xiv. 37; xvi. 4 et seq.
X iii- 7 ; comp. Numb. xxi. 21-35 ; xxxi. 3 et seq.
§ iii. 8-10. || iii. 11; comp. Josh. x. 13. Tf iii. 12-15.
** i. 5-11. ft "i- 16.
XX "i. 17-19; with 19 comp. Ps. xviii. 33.
§§ Jeremiah (ii. 11, iii. 4, 5, 10, vii. 17, 18, viii. 5, 6) utters similar re
proaches subsequently to the reformation under Josiah.

292 ZEPHANIAH. [LECT.
atry* show him not to have written after the eigh
teenth year of Josiah, when, under the auspices of
that prince, a great religious reformation took place. f
On the other hand, it is said, that, coming to the throne
in his eighth year, he could not, in the eighteenth
year of his reign, have had sons of an age to be re
ferred to as having committed public offences deserv
ing of exemplary punishment.^ But this passage also
appears to me not to admit of having any such stress
laid upon it.
He is said to have been a descendant, in the fourth
generation, from one Hizkiah.§ As his line is traced
back further than is usual, to reach this name, it is
reasonable to infer that his -ancestor was some dis
tinguished person. But it is not probable that he
was King Hezekiah, as there was hardly time for
three generations between him and King Josiah,
nor are we told of his having any other son than
Manasseh. Zephaniah's genius, compared with any of the proph
ets whom we have before considered, was tame, and
his style is unpolished, indicating a declining state of
Hebrew literature. He appears in several instances
to have copied from, or imitated, his predecessors. ||
The book appears to consist of three compositions,
corresponding with its three chapters, except that the
first three verses of the second chapter should be at
tached to the first chapter.
The first passage contains a threat against the Jews,
of coming judgments for their sins, like what we have
repeatedly seen in the earlier writers. Jehovah is in-

* Zeph. i. 4 - 6. -(-2 Kings xxii. 3 et seq.
X Zeph. i. 8. \ i. 1.
| As i. 13, comp. Amos v. 11 ; ii. 8, comp. Is. xvi. 6 ; ii. 14, 15, comp.
Is. xiii. 19-22, xxxiv. 11 ; iii. 10, comp. Is. Ix. 4 et seq.

XLVII.] ZEPHANIAH. 293
troduced as saying that, for the idolatrous impieties
of the land, he will visit it with an utter destruction.
Not only shall its human inhabitants be cut off, but
not even its beasts, birds, or fishes shall escape his ex
terminating wrath.* He has prepared and proclaimed
a great sacrifice-feast, and wicked Jews are at once
the invited guests and the purposed victims. The men
who now parade in the attire of foreign luxury, de
ceitful and violent men, are to meet their doom ; and
so heavy will it be, that all the city's crowded thorough
fares of population and trade will resound with lam
entation. Jehovah will search out guilt in' its secret
retirements, and punish those whose sins stagnate
in a thoughtless security. Their ill-acquired sub
stance shall go to the spoiler; the houses they have
built they shall not inhabit, nor drink wine from the
vineyards of their own planting."]* Speedily is this
bitter day of helpless woe to come, this " day of wrath,
of distress and anguish, of destruction and desolation,
of darkness and gloominess, of clouds and thick dark
ness, of the trumpet and the war-shout." The sinners
against Jehovah shall wander like blind men, and
their blood be poured out like dust, and their flesh
thrown away like ordure ; " neither their silver nor
their gold shall be able to deliver them." X Let the
shameless nation betake itself to reflection before the
tremendous ruin comes. Especially let the lowly and
obedient of the land abound in acts of righteousness
and humiliation. " It may be that they shall be hid,
in the day of the anger of Jehovah." §
The second chapter threatens the ancient enemies
of the Jews, and the Assyrians, whose more recent hos
tility they had experienced, with the final infliction

*Zeph.L2-6. ti-7-13. J i. 14-18. § ii. 1-3.
25*

294 ZEPHANIAH. [LECT.
upon themselves of evils similar to what they had
been God's instruments to bring upon his people.
Surely, says the prophet, the cities of maritime Philis-
tia shall be forsaken, sacked, depopulated, and rooted
up. The sea-coast, now alive with the stir of Phoe
nician commerce, transferred to the reconciled peo
ple of Jehovah's love, " shall be pastures full of habi
tations for their shepherds, and folds for their flocks,"
and " in the houses of Askelon shall they lie down "
to their evening rest.* Nor better shall be the fate
of that interior territory of the hereditary foes of Ju
dah, Moab and Ammon. " Because they have uttered
reproaches, and exalted themselves against the people
of Jehovah of hosts, Jehovah will be terrible against
them." They shall be made as Sodom and Gomorrah,
" a possession for thorns, and a pit for salt, and a per
petual desolation." The chosen people shall possess
and spoil them, and supplant with his worship that
of all their false gods."]" The boastful Ethiopian, too,
shall be slain by the sword of the Lord, "J: and Assyria,
which lately led the northern tribes into sorrowful
captivity. " He will also stretch out his hand against the North,
And destroy Assyria,
And make Nineveh a desolation,
-Even dry like a desert.
And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her,
Yea, all the tribes of beasts ;
The pelican and the hedgehog shall lodge in the capitals of her pillars ;
A cry shall resound in the window ;
Desolation shall be upon the threshold ;
For her cedar-work shall be laid bare.
This is the rejoicing city, that dwelt in security,
That said in her heart, ' I, and none besides me ! '
How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to couch in !
Every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand." — ii. 13-15.

* Zeph. ii. 4 - 7. t"-8-1!- J ii. 12.

XLVII.] ZEPHANIAH. 295
The third chapter, in a recapitulation of the pre
vailing sins, gives the reasons why the threatened
punishment will be permitted to come upon the de
voted city. It is because she is rebellious, polluted,
and oppressive ; because she is regardless of admoni
tion, and trusts not in Jehovah ; because her princes
are tyrannical, her judges rapacious, her prophets
false self-seekers, and her priests desecrators of the
sanctuary, and transgressors of the law.*
The prophet then proceeds, as usual, to declare that
the affliction will be but temporary ; that God in his
good time will relent, and when the people have be
come ashamed of their transgressions, and the surviv
ors of his judgments are of a better mind, then Jeho
vah, their God, will again be in the midst of them, the
Mighty One will save, and a cloudless and endless pros
perity efface all the remembrance of former troubled
days. Jehovah, he says, who " doeth no iniquity," who
renews every morning the proofs of his righteousness
in the view of those perverse men whom it ought to
shame, — Jehovah has conveyed admonition to Israel,
in the desolation he has wrought on other offending
nations. But deluded Israel has persevered in iniqui
ty, f Still his purposes of mercy are not abandoned.
Having sufficiently punished the guilty nations, hav
ing poured out upon them his indignation, and the
heat of his anger, he will bestow upon them pure
lips, and lead them to call upon his name and serve
him with one accord, and even from the rivers of
distant Ethiopia shall worshippers bring offerings
to his temple. X Then shall Israel too recover itself
by a late repentance. Purged from the provoking
presumption of their race, an humble and lowly peo-
* Zeph. iii. 1-4. - f "i- 3-7- t »"¦ 8_ 10-

296 OBADIAH. [LECT.
pie shall trust in the name of Jehovah, and enjoy his
parental smiles.*
" The residue of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak falsehood ;
Neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth ;
Therefore shall they feed, and lie down, and -none shall make them
afraid." — iii. 13.
The book concludes with a hymn of triumph. Let
Zion rejoice, let Israel exult, because her King hath
forborne his visitations of displeasure. He has re
moved her enemies, he has taken up his abode in the
midst of her, and she shall " see evil no more." Let
her banish every fear, for henceforward her God will
pardon her, and rejoice and exult over her. There
shall be no more mournful faces among the assemblies
of her worshippers, to subject her to reproach, as if
she were abandoned by hef God.f While all that
had afflicted her shall be destroyed, the feeblest and
most forgotten of her people shall experience the ten
der care of the Shepherd of Israel ; he will bring back
her exiles safely from the most distant lands, and make
her " a name and a praise among all the nations of the
earth." J
Obadiah signifies Servant of God. There are several
persons bearing this name in Jewish history,§ but no
one whom there is any reason to identify with the au
thor of the book embraced in the collection of Minor
Prophets. The period of its composition is equally
unknown. In the loose arrangement of the twelve
books it was probably placed next to Amos, not
with reference to its real or supposed date, but be-

* Zeph. iii. 11 - 12. f iii. 14 - 18. J iii. 19, 20.
§ 1 Kings xviii. 3 et seq; 1 Chron. iii. 21 ; vii. 3 ; viii. 38 ; ix. 16, 44 ;
xii. 9; xxvii. 19 ; 2 Chron. xvii. 7; xxxiv. 12; Ezra viii. 9; Neh. x. 5 ;
xii. 25.

XLVII.] OBADIAH. 297
cause it treats of a destruction of the Edomites, a sub
ject which had also been touched upon by that writ
er* In consideration of the following language, some
commentators place Obadiah after the captivity of the
Jews under Nebuchadnezzar.
" In the day when thou stoodest over against him,
In the day when strangers carried away captive his forces,
And when foreigners entered his gates,
And when they cast lots upon Jerusalem,
Thou also wast as one of them." — 11.
But this, I think, may be equally well understood of
the unsuccessful campaign of Sennacherib the Assy
rian, more than a hundred years earlier,! when doubt
less some Israelites were made prisoners, and when
foreigners came to (not into) the, gates. Two hun
dred years before the Babylonish captivity, the Edom
ites had been the object of similar rebukes on the part
of the Jewish writers, for indignities and violences of
fered to the nation.^ In short, I do not see that
there are materials for any satisfactory reasoning on
the subject.
That Obadiah copied from Jeremiah, and accord
ingly must have lived as late or later, has been argued
from a close resemblance between two passages of
those writers respectively. § But the truth rather ap
pears to be, that Jeremiah, whose habit it was to imi
tate and copy freely, has in this place availed himself
of the earlier composition of Obadiah. ||

* Amosi. 11, 12; ix. 12. f 2 Kings xix. 35.
J Comp. Joel iii. 19 ; Amos i. 11, 12.
§ Comp. Obad. 1-8 with Jer. xlix. 7 - 17.
|| This is very well argued by Schnurrer (" Dissertationes Philologico-
Critica;," p. 427). See also Eichhorn, " Einleitung," § 572. Particularly
he remarks that the words " we have heard a rumor," &c. (1), make a suit
able introduction to the composition of Obadiah, but that their appearance,
with a trifling alteration, in Jeremiah (xlix. 14), is most easily explained by
regarding them as part of a passage transcribed. Eichhorn ("Einleitung,"
§ 569) and Bertholdt (" Einleitung," § 407), arguing erroneously from

298 OBADIAH. [LECT.
A proclamation, says the prophet, has gone out
from Jehovah, summoning the nations to unite their
forces for an exterminating war against Edom. She
shall be brought down to a condition as abject as her
pride has been insolent. Worse than if she had been
invaded by midnight robbers, whose satiated rapacity
might have been expected to spare something, she
shall be utterly despoiled. Stripped more naked than
the vines after a gathering, not a grape shall be left
of her to be gleaned.* Her secret recesses shall be
explored; her allies will prove enemies and traitors;
the prudence of her wisest will be bewildered and baf
fled, and the valor of her mighty men prove insuffi
cient for her protection."]" All this shall be because of
her treacherous cruelty to Judah ; because, when ca
lamities thickened around the race of her kindred peo
ple, when their doom of captivity was published, and
an idolatrous enemy was thundering at their gates,
she looked on with satisfaction and triumph instead of
with pity, and, instead of sheltering their fugitives, ar
rested and betrayed them, and shared the spoils of the
unrighteous war. J For Jehovah's just judgments are
to be meted out to all the nations. The sorrows which
Edom has inflicted shall be returned upon her own
head; and as even Israel, in the time of her sinful
ness, has drunk of the cup of God's displeasure, even
verse 11 that Jerusalem had already been taken by Nebuchadnezzar, and
then erroneously referring to Josephus ("Antiq.," Lib. X. cap. 9, § 7)
for the statement (nowhere made by Josephus, nor by any other historian)
that Edom was subjugated by Nebuchadnezzar in his Egyptian war, place
the composition of Obadiah's prophecy in the five years' interval between
those events.
* Obad. 1-5. — Eichhorn ("Einleitung," § 572) imagines that the
words, "Thus saith the Lord Jehovah concerning Edom" (1), are spurious,
because of their incongruity with what immediately follows ; but without
reason. The passage only illustrates the latitude with which such ex
pressions are used in the poetical style of the prophets.
t 6-9. X 10-14.

XLVII.] OBADIAH. 299
in her sacred seat on his " holy mountain," so all the
disobedient nations shall be made to drain it to the
dregs.* Meanwhile, the prosperity of the restored
" house of Jacob " shall be as complete as the ruin of
" the house of Esau." The one shall be like stubble
for the other, like fire, to consume, till not a remnant
be left of it."]" The reinvigorated southern kingdom
shall extend its conquests on all sides. On the south
it shall establish itself in Edom ; on the west, in the
cities of Philistia ; and on the north and east, in Sa
maria and Gilead, the ancient abodes of their brethren
of Israel. Wherever the distressed people are now
captives, they shall by and by be conquerors and
lords, and Jewish governors shall go in state to pay
their vows at Mount Zion, before departing " to rule
the mount of Esau." And then the dominion shall
be not so much that of Jehovah's people as his own.J
This description of a future state of things was
never realized in any subsequent period of history
within our knowledge. Nor was any thing further
from the writer's design than to proclaim himself ac
quainted with the course of events to come. He
clothes the feelings of a patriot with the embellish
ments of poetry. If the commentators cannot main
tain in his behalf the character which they claim for
him, by pointing out a correspondence between predic
tion and fulfilment, it is not his fault, but theirs.
The New Testament has no quotation from Na
hum, Zephaniah, or Obadiah. It quotes three ver
ses from Habakkuk,§ and (incorrectly) one verse from
Micah.|| * Obad. 15, 16. \ 17, 18. J 19-21.
§ Hab. i. 5 (comp. Acts xiii. 41) ; ii. 3 (comp. Heb. x. 37) ; ii. 4 (comp.
Rom. i. 17; Gal. iii. 11 ; Heb. x. 38).
|| Mic. v. 2 ; comp. Matt. ii. 6.

300 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.

LECTURE XLVIIJ.
JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10.
Title of the Book. — Parentage and Birthplace of Jeremiah. —
Age of his Writings that of the Conflicts between Babylon
and Egypt, in which Judea was exposed to Inroads from both. —
General Topics of the Book, Rebukes of National Sins, Menaces
of Public Disaster, and Prospects of Ultimate Prosperity and
Greatness. — Frequency of Prose Explanations of the Occasions
and Subjects of the Poems. — Jeremiah placed First of the Later
Prophets in the order of the Talmud. — State of the Text. —
Violation of Chronological Sequence. — Difference between the
Arrangement of the Hebrew and that of the Septuagint. —
Other Differences between these Textual Authorities. — Anal
ysis of the Contents of the First Nine Chapters. — Summary
of the Contents of the next following Fifteen Chapters.
At the beginning of the book of Jeremiah we read
the following title : — " The words of Jeremiah, the
son of Hilkiah, one of the priests, who dwelt at Ana
thoth in the land of Benjamin ; to whom the word of
Jehovah came in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon,
king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign ; to
whom it also came in the days of Jehoiakim, the son
of Josiah, king of Judah, until the end of the elev
enth year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Ju
dah, until the carrying away of Jerusalem into captiv
ity in the fifth month."
It is not probable that Hilkiah, Jeremiah's father,
was the high priest of Josiah's time,* as that distin
guished person would naturally have been designated
* Comp. 2 Kings xxii. 8. — In Jer. xxix. 3, we, read of a"Gemariah,
the son of Hilkiah."

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1.— XXIV. 10. 301
by a more specific title. Anathoth, the prophet's birth
place, was a sacerdotal city,* a suburb of Jerusalem,
according to Josephus and Jerome."]" From " the thir
teenth year " of Josiah's reign, " until the carrying
away of Jerusalem into captivity in the fifth month "
of Zedekiah's eleventh, year, was a period of forty-two
years, embracing the short reigns of Jehoahaz and
Jehoiachin, as well as those of the monarchs named
in the inscription. From a passage of his book it
appears that Jeremiah was an example of the truth of
the maxim that " a prophet is not honored in his own
country." X The time, place, and manner of his death
are unknown, though an ancient Jewish tradition re
ports him to have been stoned to death by his coun
trymen at Tahpanhes in Egypt, after the migration in
to that country. §
The inscription describes the compositions to which
it relates as having been produced previously to " the
carrying away of Jerusalem into captivity," in the
eleventh year of Zedekiah. It must therefore have
been originally prefixed only to the first thirty-nine
chapters at most, since the six chapters which next fol
low profess to relate, and actually do relate, to events
subsequent to the captivity. There is, however, no
reason to doubt that any of the poetical compositions
comprehended in the book are genuine productions of
the prophet. The collection in our hands cannot be
the same that Baruch is said to have written out at
Jeremiah's command, || because that was written " in
* Comp. Josh. xxi. 18 ; 1 Chron. vi. 60.
f Jerome (" Commentar." ad Jer., i. 1, xi. 21) places it three miles
north of Jerusalem ; Josephus (" Antiq. Jud.," Lib. X. cap. 7, § 3) states
the distance at twenty stadia.
X Jer. xi.21-23.
$ Epiphanius, " Opp.," (edit. Petav.,) Tom. II. p. 239.
|| Comp. Jer. xxxvi. 1-4.
vol. iii. 26

302 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
the fourth year of Jehoiakim," while ours, in the part
preceding this statement, contains matter which must
be dated nearly twenty years later. Some of the
prophecies are dated in the text ; * the time of the
production of others may be inferred with more or
less probability from their contents. The earliest date
which occurs is the fourth year of Jehoiakim ; but it
is probable that the first twelve chapters are to be re
ferred to Josiah's time, and that they alone were of so
early a date."]"
The topics of the book of Jeremiah are similar to
those which we have seen treated by the other proph
ets ; namely, rebukes and anathemas of the people
for their sins, menaces of great public disasters in
consequence, and anticipations of a time of ultimate
prosperity and greatness. He lived at the period of
that great conflict between the rival powers of Egypt
and Babylon, of which Judea was often the battle
ground, and in which it was doomed to be the spoil
and victim of the conqueror. In the political agita
tions of the time, when his countrymen were natu
rally inquiring to which foreign interest they might
best look for security, he took the side of Babylon, at
least so far as to deprecate any connection with the
enemy of that empire. In this book we find more
prose narrative introduced than in any of the preced
ing ; so that it almost seems like a memoir of Jere-

* Viz., those in the following chapters : chap. iii. (6), in the reign of Jo
siah ; chaps, xxv. (1), xxvi. (1), xxvii. (1), xxxv. (1), xxxvi. (1), in that
of Jehoiakim; chaps, xxi. (1), xxiv. (1), xxviii. (1), xxix. (1,3), xxxii.
(1), xxxiii. (1), xxxiv. (2), xxxvii. (3, 6), xxxviii. (17), in that of Zede
kiah. Other notes of time, less definite, occur in chaps, xl. (1), xliii. (8),
xiv. (l),xlix. (34).
f Bertholdt (" Einleitung," § 370) refers portions of this division of the
book to the early part of Jehoiakim's reign, and others to a considerably
later period ; but, I think, with less probability.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. 303
miah, partly from his own pen, partly from some
other, interspersed with his poetical writings.
In the ancient Jewish arrangement of the Old Tes
tament books, as given in the Babylonish Talmud,*
the Book of Jeremiah is first in order among the
larger prophets, and that of Isaiah last. Among va
rious conjectures which have been proposed as to the
occasion of this arrangement, that which seems to me
a probable explanation, founded on the idea that the
book called by the name of Isaiah is an anthology, has
already been suggested in treating of that book.f
The state of the text of Jeremiah is a fact of the
utmost interest and importance in its bearing upon the
views which the critic is to take of the authority and
interpretation of that book ; and it has an incidental
relation to the criticism of the other prophetical writ
ings. The order of time in the composition of the
prophecies is violated throughout in the arrangement
of the collection, so that passages dated in the reign
of Zedekiah are placed before others as expressly re
ferred to that of Jehoiakim, and this repeatedly, and
without any apparent regard to connection of subject
any more than of chronology. X But this is not all.
From the twenty-fifth chapter to the end of the book
is found an altogether different arrangement of the
* See Vol. I. p. 40. The same order exists in several Hebrew manu
scripts collated by Kennicott and De Rossi.
f See above, p. 236, note f.
X Blayney, in his " New Translation," &c, disposes the several parts of
the book in what he supposes to be the true order as follows, viz. : — Chaps.
i. — xx., xxii., xxiii., xxv., xxvi., xxxv., xxxvi., xiv., xxiv., xxix., xxx.,
xxxi., xxvii., xxviii., xxi., xxxiv., xxxvii., xxxii., xxxiii., xxxviii., xxxix.
15 - 18, 1 - 14, xl. — xliv., xlvi. — li. But this, as to much of the arrange
ment, is quite unsatisfactory, sometimes the data being insufficient, and some
times a place being assigned to a chapter with reference to the date of the
event to which it relates, though the composition may have been produced
long afterwards.

304 JEREMIAH I. 1.— XXIV. 10. [LECT.
matter as it is presented in the two ancient textual
authorities, the Hebrew on the one hand, and the
Septuagint version on the other. In the latter, the
last six poetical chapters, consisting of prophecies
against the heathen nations, are inserted in the midst
of what in the Hebrew constitutes the twenty-fifth
chapter, and are also arranged in a different series
among themselves.* Moreover, not to speak of omis
sions in the Greek of single words found in the He
brew,"]* whole verses and even longer passages are
sometimes wanting."}: On the other hand, the Greek
sometimes supplies what there is no trace of in the
Hebrew ; § and from first to last the two authorities
materially differ in respect to those niceties of phrase
ology, without which there is no basis for the argu
ment of supernatural prediction. These discrepancies
are owing to no carelessness of modern copyists.
They are noticed by the earliest Christian critics as
existing in their time. || There can be no reasonable
doubt that the Septuagint translators, a hundred and
* The following table exhibits the succession of chapters in the Hebrew
and Septuagint Versions respectively : —
Hebrew. Greek. Hebrew. Greek.
Chap. xxv. 15-38. Chap. xxxii. Chap, xlvii. Chap. xxix. 1 -7.

xxvi.- xxxii.

u

xxxiii. -xxxix,

u

xlviii. 1-44.

tt

xxxi.

xxxiii. 1-14.

tt

xl.

It

u

45-47.

((

wanting.

» 15-26.

u

wanting.

tt

xlix.

1-6.

tt

xxx. 1-5.

xxxiv. -xxxviii.

tt

xii. -xiv.

((

tt

7-22.

ii

xxix. 7-21.

xxxix. 1-3.

a

xlvi. 1-3.

(I

Cf

23-27.

It

xxx. 12-17.

4-13.

u

wanting.

It

tt

28-33.

((

" 6-11.

" 14-18.

tt

xlvi. 4-9.

tt

tt

34-39.

Ct

xxv. 15-19.

xl.-xlv.

u

xlvii. - li.

It

i.,n

ft

xxvii., xxviii.

xlvi.

tt

xxvi.

u

ia.

(t

Iii.

t E. g. i. 11 ; ii. 17 ; iii. 1,9, 10 ; v. 13, 15 ; vii. 13, 21 ; viii. 4, 10, 13,
17 ; ix. 12, 16, 22, 25 ; xi. 22 ; xv. 11, 15 ; xvi. 1,5,6.
X E. g. xxxiii. 15-26; xxxix. 4-13 ; xlviii. 45-47.
§ E. g. ii. 28, 30, 31 ; iii. 7, 17, 18 ; iv. 2, 26, 29 ; v. 1, 17, 18 ; vii. 4,
10 ; xxviii. (Greek, xxxv.) 10 ; xxix. (Greek, xxxvi.) 1, 8.
|| Origen, " Epist. ad African.," Opp., Tom. I. p. 15 (edit. De la
Rue) ; Hieron., " Prolog." ad Commentar. in Jer.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. 305
fifty years before the Christian era, had in their hands
a Hebrew text differing from the Hebrew now extant
in such particulars and such characteristics as I have
thus briefly indicated.
These facts are evidently of the utmost consequence.
In the interpretation of an alleged supernatural pre
diction, every thing depends on the certainty that the
words supposed to contain such prediction are the
selfsame words that were originally uttered. But in re
spect to one of the greater prophets, — to that prophet
whose works were anciently placed by his countrymen
at the head of the list, — to that prophet whose record
ed sayings present much the most plausible case of
supernatural foreknowledge that exists among the post-
Mosaic Old Testament writers, — in respect to him we
have evidently nothing like such certainty. On the
contrary, the facts which have been mentioned make
it unquestionable, that, either from the little care
taken for the safe preservation of his writings in the
time immediately following their composition, or from
some other cause (and the cause is immaterial), they
have come to us in an altogether equivocal shape.
Nor does the disagreement of the two great author
ities affect our trust in both only as to the portions
which exhibit that disagreement. It unsettles our
confidence also in all the rest, as it shows the little at
tention which was bestowed on the safe-keeping of
the whole book. And, finally, if we are thus forbid
den, in the case of Jeremiah, to use an argument re
quiring for its basis a certainty of having in our hands
his genuine words, the doubt extends itself in some
degree to the writings of the other prophets, held by
contemporaries in no higher esteem than his, and
transmitted to us through precisely the same cus
tody. 26*

306 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
\
The first chapter of the book, according to the com
mentators, contains an account of communications
made to the prophet, in which Jehovah commissioned
him for his work, and acquainted him with the sub
jects to which his admonitions should relate. I see no
propriety whatever in the method adopted by some
translators, of distinguishing this, by the manner of
printing, as a prosaic passage. On the contrary, it
seems to me to contain as adventurous a flight of po
etry as perhaps any in the book. It is one feature of
the history of the poetry of any nation, that later poets
imitate the style of earlier. Jeremiah took the fash
ions of his art as he found them. Whatever was the
taste, or whatever were the circumstances, which had
led Amos, Joel, Isaiah, and other writers of earlier
times, to use freely the figure called vision, and resort
to that other peculiar form of rhetoric by which the
writer represents himself as being directed to perform
symbolical acts, in point of fact they had done so.
These had become established forms of poetical ex
pression, and Jeremiah, in adopting them, did but ac
commodate himself to the taste which his predecessors
had formed or followed.* The present passage is a
feeble imitation of one of the same general tenor in
the sixth chapter of Isaiah. Jeremiah copies, but,
with judicious modesty, shrinks from the attempt to
rival. Ezekiel's aim of the same kindf is more ad
venturous, and his accomplishment accordingly is far
less satisfactory.
From my very birth, says the prophet, nay, be
fore my birth, I recognized myself as having been des
ignated by a foreseeing Providence to be a teacher of
the people. In the meditations of my youth, Jehovah
* See Vol. II. pp. 390, 405 et seq-, 418 et seq., 432.
f Ezek. i. 1, et seq.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1. - XXIV. 10. 307
seemed to say to me that he had destined me for that
work. Inexperienced and diffident, I would have
shrunk from it; but it was Jehovah's will that I
should counsel and remonstrate in his behalf, and I
could not decline the task. Devoting myself to his
service, I felt an assurance that he would give me
courage, and make me equal to my undertaking. I
seemed to hear him say that he would be with me to
help me. I seemed to hear him promise that it was
words of his own suggestion that I should speak.
From himself appeared to come the power of which I
was conscious, to proclaim his sovereignty over the
nations, and publish his purposes of vengeance and
of mercy.*
Thenceforward, in all that came under my view,
and in all my musings, I found lessons of excitement
and preparation for my work. Did I, in fact or in
imagination, look upon a bough of the almond-tree,
that takes its name from its being the first tree of the
garden to put forth its buds in the spring, I was re
minded how prompt Jehovah is to accomplish his
purposes.f Was my observation or my thought at
tracted to so common an object as a seething pot, —
the cloud of steam blown southward from its top awa
kened in me the remembrance of the quarter whence
the Babylonian hordes should invade the land of my
fathers, and the city and temple of Jehovah. I found
myself invited to mournful meditations on the judg
ments he was about to bring on his rebellious people.
I seemed to hear him threaten the woe and desolation
due to their insane idolatries, and at the same time ex
hort me to courage in doing all the part of a holy and
patriotic man to avert the impending calamities. And
* Jer. i. 4-10. f *• n> 12-

308 . JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
so I addressed myself to that service, secured of his
guidance and aid.*
The poem which follows occupies the second chap
ter and five verses of the third. Hear me, says the
prophet, " O house of Jacob, and all the families of
the house of Israel," while I expostulate with you in
Jehovah's name. He remembers fondly, if you do
not, his early kindness to your race ; how in its infan
cy he rescued you from a land of bondage, and led
you in sacred security through a strange wilderness,
and took sure vengeance on all that harmed you, and
" brought you to a land of fruitful fields, to eat the
fruit thereof, and the good thereof." What parental
kindness did he forbear to show, to excuse the ingrati
tude of those who forsook his service for every foolish
vanity, whose very priests and teachers forgot him,
whose rulers rebelled, and whose prophets spoke in
the name of idol gods "? "j" Jehovah cannot overlook
such levity, a levity unparalleled even by the benight
ed nations ; they, by their steady devotion to their
false gods, shame the wanton apostasy of Israel, —
heedless and besotted Israel, who to the crime of for
saking the fountain of living waters adds the folly of
painfully building leaky cisterns, that can hold no re
freshment for the soul. Heaven looks down with
shuddering wonder on such infatuation. J
Has Israel become a slave, from being Jehovah's
own child 1 Exposed to the ravages of every spoiler,
he no longer seems like " a child of the household."
Violent men, like fierce beasts, roar over him. They
have desolated his land. They have sacked and burned
his cities. Spoilers from distant Egyptian towns have
trodden on his pride. Why is all this ruin, but be-
* Jer. i. 13-19. f " 1-8. X «• 9-13.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1.- XXIV. 10. 309
cause of his faithlessness to his Divine Benefactor]
Why is it that captive troops of his children are driv
en westward to the Egyptian Nile, and eastward to
the Assyrian Euphrates, but that he may learn to re
flect on his misdeeds, and see in his own wayward
wickedness the root of his bitter calamities 1 *
The degeneracy that has reached such a depth be
gan long ago in impatience of subjection, and prone-
ness to every idolatrous impurity. The choice vine of
Jehovah's own planting grew wild, and. lost its gener
ous nature. No superficial cleansing will so disguise
the foulness that has been incurred, as to hide it from
Jehovah's pure and penetrating view. No protesta
tions of innocence can weigh aught against the palpa
ble evidence of guilt. So fierce are the evil passions
that have sway, that as well might one think of stop
ping the lecherous brutes, instead of waiting for the
time when they will tamely return to their pasture.
Exhortations to place restraint on the wanton appetite
are bootless. They will only be answered by the ex
pression of a desperate self-abandonment to the en
grossing sin."]"
Israel, that in its prosperity abandoned itself to
idol service, and turned away from God in the time of
trouble, with the abjectness of a detected thief, prays
to him to " arise and .save." Well may Jehovah bid
it seek protection from the gods it has preferred to
him. They will not be far to seek. There are as
many of them as there are cities in the land. Let
their power, so long extolled, be now tried. Why
should the people come to Jehovah ] One and all,
they have deserted his service. And when he would
have reclaimed them by chastening, the effort was in
* Jer. ii. 14-19. f «• 20-25.

310 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
vain. They did but stain their swords with the blood
of those who would have turned them back to the
ways of wisdom.* Why this aversion 1 Has Jehovah
been a dark desert to his people, that they should
please themselves in wandering as far as possible away
from him % A maiden and a bride will scarcely forget
so much as their personal adornments. How is it that
Israel so easily and so constantly forgets its Divine
Benefactor 1 Why does it so wickedly lust after idol
atrous alliances 1 Why allow, within its own borders,
the oppression of " the innocent poor," — and all this
with an effrontery and with boasts of rectitude that
provoke still angrier displeasure l It is vain to hope
for help from Egypt, any more than from Assyria, which
has already disappointed your foolish hopes, and turned
you back in derision on your own resources. Jeho
vah, in whom you should have trusted, dooms your
other objects of reliance to prove vain.f What hope
can you have in repeating these often-broken vows, in
making these professions of repentance, so often proved
false and worthless'? Will a man take back to his
home his unfaithful and polluted wife 1 Will Jehovah
then receive back his people, that, defying his gentle
chastisements, has strayed from him to make its wick
edness a proverb, to multiply its impurities, with clam
orous impudence to proclaim its dishonor, and not to
desist from its evil courses even when it pretends to'
have compunctious visitings, and cries out to God,
" Thou art my father,
Yea, thou wast the friend of my youth !
Will he retain his anger for ever ?
Will he keep it for evermore ? " {
If there seems to be little variety or richness in the
* Jer. ii. 26-30. f ii. 31-37. J iii. 1-5.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. 3H
poem I have thus analyzed, this is partly owing to the
moderate character of the author's genius. The com
position is no bad specimen of his style. He is sin
cere, honest, and earnest, but not brilliant or impas
sioned. His range of imagery is narrow ; his diffuse-
ness and repetitions are apt to weary the attention.
It is a heavy-laden heart, and not a full mind, that is
poured out in his strains.
In the next passage, extending through the rest of
the third chapter and two verses of the fourth, the
prophet represents himself as having been impelled
" in the time of King Josiah," a hundred years after
the fall and captivity of the northern kingdom, to
meditate on its sins and their retribution, and on the
still bolder sin of its " faithless sister Judah," which,
instead of being impressed by the solemn warning of
its fate, had imitated all its crimes, and never mani
fested a sincere repentance. As he pursued these
meditations, " rebellious Israel " seemed to him " less
guilty than faithless Judah " ; Israel, more than Judah,
to be' a fit subject for the Divine compassion ; Judah,
more than Israel, to merit the Divine rebuke.* Ac
cordingly, he calls upon exiled Israel to trust in Je
hovah's long-suffering mercy, and, by repentance and
free acknowledgment of sin, to recover his forfeited
favor."]" Jehovah will graciously receive the penitents,
however few they may be, and establish them in peace
in his holy city, the" city of their fathers, under wise
and trusty rulers. There shall they increase and mul
tiply. " The ark of the covenant of Jehovah," before
which were once held the assemblies of the chosen
tribes, shall no longer be thought of, so completely
shall the sanctity and reverence that once attached to
* Jer. iii. 6-11. t i;i- 12> 13-

312 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. , [LECT.
it be superseded by that which invests Jerusalem, " the
throne of Jehovah:" To that seat of Jehovah's power,
in the better times to come, all nations will obediently
resort, and " the house of Judah " will dwell there in
happy union with the returned exiles of Ephraim.*
The prospect is so pleasing, that he dwells upon it
with repetition. I hear, he says, Jehovah proclaim to
his recreant children, the exiled Israelites, that, faith
less as they have been, he will not give up the thought
that again they will call him their father, and permit
him to " place them among his children, and give them
a pleasant land, a goodly inheritance among the many
nations." And I hear too the voice of the penitent
grief of the revolted children of Israel. They profess
that it is in vain for them to look for support or deliver
ance except from God ; that, when estranged from him,
all their prosperity has withered, and their honor been
turned to shame. Again I hear Jehovah accept and
welcome the avowal. Again I hear him promise to
penitent Israel a happy reestablishment, and a prosper
ous and honored residence, in its ancient abodes."]"
The next composition, extending to the close of the
sixth chapter, is a diffuse expostulation with " the
men of Judah and Jerusalem," embracing the custom
ary topics. God calls upon you, says the prophet, un
der pain of his heavy displeasure, to see to the refor
mation of your tempers, and not of your ritual only ;
to " break up the fallow ground " of your hearts, and
not be content with such unprofitable culture as sow
ing upon the thorns that cover their surface. J The
great public calamities that seem impending have been
provoked by neglect of Jehovah, and can only be
* Jer. iii. 14-18. f iii. 19 -iv. 2.
X iv. 3, 4. This language suits well with the reformation under the aus
pices of Josiah. See 2 Kings xxiii. 1-25.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1.— XXIV. 10. 313
averted by a penitent and zealous submission to his
authority. There is no time to lose. Hark ! already
I hear the distant tread of the ferocious invader. Set
up the standard on the top of Zion. Blow your trum
pet-call for reinforcements. Flee every man into
the strongholds. " The destroyer of nations is on his
way." He comes like " a lion from his thicket " to
execute " the fierce anger of Jehovah." Break out
into lamentation. Clothe yourselves with sackcloth.
For he comes with a fierceness and might that causes
the hearts of the king and princes to faint within
them, that amazes the priests, and confounds the
prophets.* Fain was I to remonstrate with Jehovah, and to say
that, instead of this " sword reaching to the very
life," he had promised his people prosperity and quiet.
But I seemed to hear sad truths which silenced me
from such pleading. The ravagers
" are round about her,
Because she hath rebelled against me, saith Jehovah.
Thy way and thy doings have brought this upon thee ;
This is the fruit of thy wickedness." — iv. 17, 18.
Therefore it is that from the desert hills there comes a
prostrating and desolating blast ; therefore, that an
enemy is coming to darken the earth like a cloud,
his chariots wasting "like a whirlwind," his horses
" swifter than eagles." Already the voice of approach
ing doom is heard from the northern fastnesses of
Dan. Repent, if it may not yet be too late for es
cape. " Wash thy heart from wickedness, O Jerusa
lem, that thou mayst be saved." f The mournful
sound overwhelms me with alarm. I am convulsed
with anguish for the sorrows of my wretched country.

* Jer. iv. 5-9. t iv- 10-18.
vol. iii. 27

314 JEREMIAH I. 1.- XXIV. 10. [LECT.
Is there no rescue 1 How long are such awful scenes
to last? I ask, and Jehovah tells me that it is to its
wickedness that my people owes its misery,* All ifc
darkness and the desolation of despair. There is nothr
ing stable on earth; no light from heaven; the very
mountains totter on their deep foundations. Man has
fled from his habitations, the birds have forsaken the
sky, " before the presence of Jehovah, before the heat
of his anger." The cities of the land are razed from
its surface, and all its fairest scenes are made a wilder
ness.! Nor are Jehovah's purposes of wrath exhausted
yet ; for he has spoken and will not repent, he has
threatened in vain, and now he will execute his warn
ings. He will make desolation and woe upon the earth.
He will hang the heavens with blackness. Catching
the murmur of the distant invader, cities shall pour
out their frightened crowds to wander among rocks
and thickets. What will proud, but helpless, Judah
do ? Will she put on all the gaudy attire of her wan
tonness, and go out in the vain hope of winning by
her caresses the lovers whom she preferred to Jehovah !
Her very lovers are her foes. They will spurn her from
before their feet. Loading the air with sobs, shriek
ing with the anguish of a travailing woman, spreading
out vainly for succour her aimless hands, she will be
heard to upbraid the very sharers of her guilt as the
plotters against her life.J
And yet one cannot but vindicate the ways of Jeho
vah, severe as are his visitations. So gracious is he,
that, if in all Jerusalem there could have been found a
single just and upright man, he would have accepted
the omen, and rejoiced to forgive her backslidings.
But none such was there. If one seemed to call upon

Jer. iv. 19-22. t "¦ 23~26- t iv- 27"31"

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1.- XXIV. 10. 315
his name, it was but falsehood and mockery.* All his
successive chastisements had but hardened them in re
bellion. It was not the common people alone, whose
ignorance might have been some excuse. " The great
ones," not less flagrantly than they, had " broken the
yoke, and burst asunder the bands " of obedience.
Because thus their outrageous rebellions were multi
plied, they should be given over for a prey to every evil
beast.f How could Jehovah pardon them, when thus
flagitiously and desperately disobedient and depraved ]
No ! the long-suffering on which they have presump
tuously relied is exhausted. The judgments they
have defied they must endure. The threats they have
disregarded must be fulfilled. Jehovah's word by his
servants is not empty breath. It will blaze into a flame
to consume the sinful people. A warlike nation from
afar, a mighty nation wielding a power built up on the
prosperity of earlier times, a nation not to be moved to
compassion by any claims of kindred or community of
language, will be the instruments of his vengeance.
Their quivers loaded with death, they shall descend
with unsparing fury upon the harvest and the house
hold, the flocks and the herds, the vineyards and the
strongholds of cities, and mark their march with a
universal ruin. Last of their miseries, the wretched
people shall be driven away into distant captivity, to
expiate the sin of rendering idolatrous service to
strange gods in their own land, by rendering menial
service to strangers in a land not their own. X
Let them be warned by the prospect of these calam
ities, and seek to avert them by timely reformation.
Let the reckless, stupid, senseless people learn wisdom
enough to tremble before him who sets to the sea its
* Jer. v. 1, 2. t v- 3~6-
X v. 7-19. — In verses 15-17 Jeremiah appears to refer to Deut. xxviii.
49-53.

316 JEREMIAH I. 1.- XXIV. 10. [LECT.
bounds, and can still the angry roaring of its waves
with his sovereign word. The deaf and unreasoning
sea has more sense of its subjection than this rebel
lious people, for whom Jehovah sends the seasonable
showers in vain, and ripens the bounty of the annual
harvest. Greedy of sin, they repel from themselves
the blessings he desires to bestow. They add injustice
to impiety. The crafty entrap the simple. Riches
are amassed by abounding fraud. The cause of the
needy and the orphan finds no defender. Astounding
and shocking is the prevailing wickedness. Precept
and principle have become as bad as practice. The
very teachers teach falsehood, and the very priests ap
ply their lessons, and the people take pleasure in the
treachery of both. What lower debasement remains
to be reached % *
Nothing remains but dire retribution for such crime.
Prepare for it, for it will not delay. Retire from the
capital city, which will be the enemy's first aim, and
erect in the mountainous holds your feeble defences
against the ruin coming from the north, from which
Jehovah, whom you have so outraged, cannot be ex
pected to shield you. So far from protecting, himself
has pronounced your doom. It is his own will that
for her sins the delicate child of his care shall be a
prey to the rude spoilers, — that they shall approach
and invest her by day, and destroy her palaces at night,
that they shall overtop her proud towers with their
mounds of assault, and strip her as thoroughly as the
last gleaner strips a vine, because, rejecting his entreat
ies that she would receive his correction, she welled
forth wickedness as a fountain its flood, and affronted
Jehovah with the sound of her violence and the sight
of her cruelties.f * Jer. v. 19-31. f vi. 1-9.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1.— XXIV. 10. 317
But how shall I continue to speak, when the in
fatuated people turn a deaf ear to Jehovah's word1?
Or how shall I bear to be silent, when I witness such
mad security 1 I will utter that with which my spirit
is overpowered. Young and old shall hear my warn
ings alike, for all alike are to be sharers in the ap
proaching doom. Great and humble, flattering preach
er and faithless priest, upon all shall the destruction
come, the retribution of sordidness and fraud. They
who should rebuke prevailing sin do but excuse it in
others, and practise it without shame themselves.
Their punishment shall be signal, as their offence is
gross.* Jehovah has often invited them to find rest
for their perturbed spirits by a return to the good
old ways of wisdom, and as often have they insolently
refused. He has raised up among them pious and
patriotic men, sincere watchers for their welfare. But
to these they would give no heed. His patience is
exhausted. The wondering world shall see what sor
rows he will bring upon them, " the fruit of their
own devices." Sacrifices and incense will no longer
soothe him. His sentence against this people has
denounced a universal decay and wreck, involving
parents and children, neighbours and friends."]" In
vading hosts from the northern country will execute
that doom on Jerusalem, as invaders from the same
quarter have long ago executed it on rebellious Israel.
Arrayed in the panoply of war, sending the shout
of anticipated triumph before them, they will rush
on, with the speed of their swift horses, to execute
* Jer. vi. 10-15.
f vi. 16-21. — In verse 21, the noun bWOl?, from bit) 3, he fainted, lie
tottered, is rendered in the Septuagint translation by aaBeveia, weakness, in
firmity, instead of " stumbling-block," its common meaning. The Vulgate
renders the word by ruina.
27*

318 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
their ferocious purpose. A universal panic preceding
their arrival will prepare for them an easy victory.
Instead of being drawn up to oppose them in mar
shalled squadrons, the people on the sudden approach
of the spoiler will flee from the fields and highways,
and abandon themselves to lamentations and despair.
As one standing firmly for Jehovah's right, concludes
the prophet, I have tried this people by the sure test
of his law, and I have found them to be but base
metal. The mass has proved not even to afford any
precious ore, to reward the refiner by separation from
the dross. It is fit only to be rejected both by man
and God.*
The next poem occupies the next three following
chapters. Methought, says the prophet, Jehovah bade
me go stand in the gate of his temple, and in that
most public place of Jerusalem address my rebukes to
the people. " If," he bade me say to them, " you would
continue to have this city for your home, you must
not rely on traditional privileges, as if you yourselves
were Jehovah's temple and dwelling-place, which he
would always keep from harm. You must ' amend
your ways and your doings, and dispense justice be
tween man and man,' abandon idolatrous observances,
and refrain from oppression of the weak. But in
stead of this you trust every deceiver, and riot in the
breaking of all the commandments. And then you
come to my house, flaunting in all the airs of inno
cence, — to my house, which, when it receives such
guests, seems rather like a den of robbers.f Learn

* Jer. vi. 22-30. — The passage in 27-30 is obscure. In parts the text
is uncertain, and some of the words in the received Hebrew are of doubtful
meaning. It is easier to seize the general idea intended to be conveyed, than
to follow out its details.
f vii. 1-11.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1.— XXIV. 10. 319
how vain is such presumption from the fate of the
sister kingdom. In Shiloh I first set my name,* and
there, long ages ago, the tribes first reposed from their
desert wanderings. Seek for it now, and you find noth
ing but its ruins, and they are a monument of 'the
wickedness of my people Israel,' to whom it belonged.
As the same has been your perversity, the same shall
be your doom. As are Ephraim and Shiloh, so shall
be Judah and Jerusalem."]" And it is in vain for thee,
Jeremiah, to intercede with me in their behalf. I can
not hear thee, so long as their bold idolatries contin
ually offend my sight ; so long as, from city to city,
from street to street, from house to house, all, from
least to greatest, emulously do their part, the sons
gathering wood for the father to make a fire for the
mother to bake bread for an idol's table. They vain
ly imagine it is me they wrong. No ; it is themselves,
as they shall speedily find, when my avenging fury
shall sweep with an utter desolation through the
land.J " Multiply your hypocritical sacrifices, if you will ;
but all will not avail. It is not with such obedi
ence that I am pleased. As long ago as the time when
I adopted you for my people, my great command to
your fathers was not any thing relating to their ritual,
but it was that they should ' hearken to my voice,' and
' walk in all the ways which I commanded.' On that
condition, I said, I will be your God, and ye shall be
my people. But that condition your obdurate race
have not kept. Through every period of their his
tory, they have affronted and provoked me by the
' obstinacy of their evil heart,' neglecting my remon
strances, disregarding my servants, hardening their
* Comp. Vol. II. p. 116, note.
f Jer. vii. 12- 15 ; with verse 12 compare Joshua xviii. 1.
X vii. 16-20.

320 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
necks, and each generation surpassing the guilt of its
forerunners. Thy expostulations, Jeremiah, will be
equally unavailing. Be content to tell them that
they are the people who have bid farewell to truth
and honor, whom God's own voice cannot awaken,
whom his own chastening cannot subdue.*
" Let Jerusalem put off the adornments of her
vanity, and send abroad the cry of her distress. For
Jehovah hath abandoned the children who have aban
doned him, and filled his dwelling-place with abomina
tions. For in sight of my own temple, in ' the high
places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son
of Hinnom,' they have practised horrid rites of idola
try which my law forbade. The odious spot shall be
their own wide burial-place. It shall take the name
of ' the Valley of Slaughter.' There the wild beasts
and carrion birds shall feed at leisure on their heaped
up corses. An unbroken silence in the cities of Ju
dah and the streets of Jerusalem shall take the place
of the voice of joy and merriment, 'the voice of the
bridegroom and the voice of the bride ' ; and an ut
ter desolation shall overspread the land.| The sav
age victors will not even respect the sacredness of the
house of death. From humble graves and from splen
did mausoleums the bones of people and of princes, of
prophets, priests, and kings, will be thrown out to
whiten in the sun and rain, and to be looked down
upon by that host of heaven to which the skeleton
arm was once uplifted, and the fleshless knee once
bent. There shall they lie exposed, to crumble and
fatten the earth ; while the wretched exiles of a later
generation wear out their lives in distant servitude, and
long for death to rid them of their weight of woes. J
* Jer. vii. 21-28.
f vii. 29-34 ; with 30, 31, compare 2 Kings xxi. 2-6, xxiii. 4-7.
X viii. 1-3.

XLVIII] JEREMIAH I. 1.- XXIV. 10. 321
"When a man stumbles and falls, he is expected
straightway to rise again. When a man loses his
way, he will as soon as possible return to it. Even
the unreasoning birds know as much as the proper
time for their return in spring. But this people of
mine persist in their wanderings and revolt. They
cling to their delusions. They rush on at full speed
in their rebellions, like a charger to the onset of bat
tle. What wisdom can they pretend to ] Of what
profit to them is the written word 1 The Scribes have
perverted the sense of the law, and, in their alienation
from Jehovah, the wisdom of the wisest is turned to
confusion, dismay, and helplessness.* The people, de
voted to sordid gains, are lulled into false security by
the treacherous blandishments of those to whom it
belongs to teach them better, till they have ceased
even to blush at their abominable practices. Their
punishment is not to be long delayed. Spoilers shall
violate their dwellings, and trample over their fields,
and ravage and ruin all their substance, so that there
shall be no grapes upon the vine, nor fruit upon the
fig, nor green leaf on any tree."]" Abandoned to de
spair, conscious that a grievous retribution, and not
peace nor deliverance, is due from Jehovah for their
sins, alarmed by the neighing of the horses of the in- .
vaders, as it reaches their ears from the northern hills
of Dan, they turn to the fortified cities, there in silence
to await their doom. And thither Jehovah will pur
sue them, as it were with fiery serpents.J The time
when they hoped for deliverance has passed by, and no
deliverance comes. They cry out from the places of
their retreat, and ask whether Jehovah, the Saviour of
their fathers, no longer has his throne on Mount Zion.
* Jer. viii. 4-9. f viii. 10-13. J viii. 14-17.

322 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
Do the forests of Gilead yield no balsam for their
wounds 1 Is there no physician there, to apply it for
their healing 1 But Jehovah replies that their offences
have provoked him, and that they must no more look
to him as their defender.* The sight of such woe
makes one weep, as from a never-failing fountain of
tears. The sight of such wickedness makes one long
to retreat to some untrodden solitude. Impurity and
impiety are rife in the land. By falsehood, treachery,
and slander, prosperity and repute are won. Jeho
vah's authority is forgotten, and men run wild in vice
and crime, f Therefore it is that punishment will
come suddenly Upon them ; that desolation shall over
spread the land ; that the pastures shall be scorched,
and the voice of cattle be stilled ; that beasts and birds
shall disappear from the earth and the sky ; and that
populous Jerusalem shall be changed into a pile of
loose stones, and a hiding-place for jackals.^
" The cause of the ruin which impends over the na
tion, every wise man, every man religiously instructed,
easily understands. It is because they have forsaken
Jehovah's law, and gone after idols, that their once
smiling country is to be changed to a desert land, that
they are to drain a cup of bitter calamity, and in dis
tant regions to be a prey to the exterminating sword.§
Call for those who have studied the art of lamentation
and make a trade of mourning, and let them set up
their loudest lament, and let mothers teach their
daughters the strain, and to add more tears and sobs
to theirs. For the dwellings in the land of Israel
must be cast down, and their tenants must go into dis
tant banishment, and death must climb into the win
dows of palaces, and cut down children and youth in
* Jer. viii. 18-22. f ix. 1-6. } ix. 7-11. § ix. 12-16.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. 323
the streets, and, far as the eye can see, unburied bodies
must enrich the fields. The judgments of Jehovah
will show that there is no cause for glorying in any of
the common occasions of pride, in human wisdom, or
power, or splendor; that there is no secure object of
reliance except that loving-kindness of his own, which
he delights in exercising towards those who have re
gard to him, and understand his majestic attributes.
Those judgments will reach beyond the Jewish people,
the people 'uncircumcised in heart.' They will visit
also the sins of the uncircumcised nations around,
that all the earth may see and know that Jehovah is
as just as mighty." *
We have had a sufficient specimen of Jeremiah's
manner in treating these common topics of the pro
phetical writings, and I shall pursue this close analy
sis no farther. The next following passage, consisting
of the first sixteen verses of the tenth chapter, and
treating of the impotence of idols, the folly of their
votaries, and the power and rightful authority of Jeho
vah, affords one of the most favorable examples in the
book of its author's style."]"
In the next two compositions, ending respectively
with the close of the tenth chapter, and the seven
teenth verse of the eleventh, we have little else than a
repetition of the same thoughts which have been so
often presented in the earlier part of the book. In the
former, the people of Jerusalem are warned to prepare
for impending banishment, and are represented as be-
* Jer. ix. 17-26.
¦f- Yet some of its best beauties are plagiarisms. Comp. x. 3-5 with
Ps. cxv. 4-8 ; x. 12, 13, with Job xxxvi. 27, 28, Prov. iii. 19, 20. —Verse
11 is in the Chaldee language, a fact of which no more probable explanation
occurs, than that it was the marginal note of some commentator, subse
quently transferred through carelessness into the text.

324 JEREMIAH I. 1.- XXIV. 10. [LECT.
wailing their lot, acknowledging its justice, and pray
ing to Jehovah to take vengeance on them in modera
tion, and to transfer it from them to their enemies and
his own. In the latter, the people are reminded of
the covenant which God made with their fathers when
he rescued them from Egypt, and of the sinfulness of
their treachery to it, and are threatened in the usual
terms with the punishments which they have thereby
deserved. In the poem which, beginning with the eighteenth
verse of the eleventh chapter, extends to the end of the
twelfth, Jeremiah refers to a plot against himself on
the part of his fellow-citizens of Anathoth, of which,
by the providence of Jehovah; he had made a timely
discovery. They had conspired against his life because
he had spoken to them the truths of Jehovah's word.
But Jehovah, he says, will visit them with exemplary
punishment. Then he remonstrates with Jehovah be
cause of the prosperity of the wicked compared with
the troubles which have come upon him in his course
of fidelity, and represents himself as being told that
he faints and complains too soon ; that greater calam
ities are approaching ; that his enemies and the whole
people are to be given up to a fearful overthrow ; but
still that there is hope of future pardon and restora
tion ; that, as Jehovah designs to punish his people for
their sins, so he designs to punish their invaders for
the same ; that eventually they will themselves have to
suffer the evils which they were made Jehovah's in
struments to inflict, while the rejected house of Judah
shall again find reconciliation and favor, and dwell in
peace in its ancient possessions, and their present op
pressors, if they will adopt their faith, shall also share
in their prosperity* * With Jer. xi. 19, comp. Is. liii. 7, 8.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. 325
Then follows a piece, in the thirteenth chapter, in-
introduced by some verses in which the writer repre
sents himself as having been divinely directed to
travel, twice, five or six hundred miles, to the river
Euphrates, once to bury there a girdle which he had
worn next his body, and next to dig it up again, and
find it " marred and good for nothing." For what I
conceive to be the correct view of this poetical form of
representation, I refer to the remarks in my Thirty-
sixth Lecture on a similar strain in Hosea.* Noth
ing can be more puerile and preposterous than the
commonly received interpretation of this passage, rep
resenting the prophet to have been sent twice on a
journey of such length, for the purpose of bringing
back a figure of speech which was just as much at his
command at home.-]" In the use of a rhetorical de
vice agreeable to the taste and familiar to the use of
his nation, he sets forth that Jehovah, who had, as it
were, worn his chosen people next to himself like a
girdle, would for their sins transport them to the
Babylonish provinces by the Euphrates, and make
them as worthless as a girdle worn out ; and so he
would " mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of
Jerusalem." The passage then proceeds, in the usual
manner, to denounce the impending national destruc
tion. The next poem, embracing the fourteenth and fif
teenth chapters, begins with a description of a drought,
which the writer interprets as an expression of the Di
vine displeasure against the national sins.f With
confessions of ill-desert, he mingles prayers for mercy, §
to which he represents Jehovah as replying with as
surances of protection for himself,|| and the usual re-
* Vol. II. pp. 418-423. t ComP- Jer. xxv. 15 et seq.
X Jer. xiv. 1-6. § xiv. 7-9, 19-22. || xv. 11, 19-21.
VOL. III. 28

326 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
bukes and denunciations of approaching misery for
the people.*
The sixteenth and seventeenth chapters may be con
veniently regarded as constituting one composition,
though admitting of divisions, respectively beginning
at the ninth verse of the former chapter, and the fifth
and nineteenth of the latter. In a strain of merely
poetical exaggeration, the prophet says that, governed
by the manifest will of Jehovah, he can form no fam
ily ties in his native land, because children born there
are doomed to die unlamented, by famine and sword,
and their bodies to be cast out unburied, to be preyed
upon by birds and beasts ; "f" and he goes on at length in
his usual manner, with denunciations of the approach
ing ruin, declaring that it is Jehovah's righteous vis
itation for the wickedness of his chosen race.J Still
he ventures to look forward to a time when they will
be reestablished in their ancient home.§ He sets
forth the folly of the man who " maketh flesh his
arm," and " getteth riches, and not by right," and on
the other hand the blessedness and security of him
who " placeth his hope " in the glorious, mighty,
heart-searching Jehovah.|| The seventeenth chapter
concludes with an exhortation to a strict observance of
the Sabbath day, accompanied with the assurance that,
if that day be not sacredly kept, there shall be kindled
" an unquenchable fire, which shall devour the palaces
of Jerusalem " ; but that if it be,
" Then shall enter the gates of this city kings and princes,
Who sit upon the throne of David,
Riding in chariots and on horses,
They and their chieftains,

* With Jer. xv. 4, comp. 2 Kings xxi. 1 et seq; with xv. 16, Ps. cxix.
Ill; with xv. 17, Ps. i. 1.
f xvi. 1-4. X xvi- 5-13; 16 -xvii. 4. § xvi, 14 15_
|| xvii. 5 - 18 ; with verses 7, 8, comp. Ps. i. 1-3.

XLVIII] JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. 327
The men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem ;
And this city shall be inhabited for ever.
Then from the cities of Judah, and the places around Jerusalem,
From the land of Benjamin, and from the plain,
From the mountains, and from the South,
Shall they come bringing burnt-offerings, and sacrifices,
And flour-offerings, and incense,
And bringing thank-offerings to the house of Jehovah." — xvii. 25,26.
In the eighteenth chapter, from thoughts which Jer
emiah, watching the work of a potter, was led to en
tertain respecting the sovereign power of Jehovah, as
complete as that of the potter over the clay to which
he gave any shape at will,* he proceeds to say that
Jehovah, who strictly adjusts to the character and con
duct of a nation or kingdom his own dealings with
it,"]" designs to inflict signal vengeance on perverse and
obdurate Israel. J And the prophet, incensed at the
injustice and ingratitude of which he was himself the
object, forgets his accustomed magnanimous and pa
triotic tone of feeling, and prays that his own wrongs
may be remembered by Jehovah, and taken into the
account to aggravate the calamities of the guilty peo
ple. Because, he says, to me they have returned evil
for good, " Therefore give thou up their sons to famine,
And deliver them to the edge of the sword !
Let their wives be childless and widows,
Let their men be slain by pestilence,
And their young men fall by the sword in battle.
Let a cry be heard from their houses,
When thou shalt bring a troop upon them suddenly
For they have digged a pit to take me,
And hidden snares for my feet.
Thou, O Jehovah, knowest all their plots against my life !
Cover not their iniquity,
And blot not out their sin from thy sight !
But let them be overthrown before thee ;
Deal with them in the time of thy wrath ! " — xviii. 21 - 23.
* Jer. xviii. 1-6. f xviii. 7-11. J xviii. 12-17.

328 JEREMIAH I. l.-XXIV. 10. [LECT.
In the passage which occupies the nineteenth chap
ter, Jeremiah records that he seemed to hear Jehovah
bid him buy a piece of potter's ware, and with this in
his hand, and accompanied by " the elders of the peo
ple, and the elders of the priests," to " go forth to the
valley of the son of Hinnom," without the walls, and
there make proclamation to king and people of the
approaching national calamities and their cause ; to
say that, because of the idolatrous practices of which
the place where they stood had been the scene, it
should before long witness such massacres as would
entitle it to be called " the Valley of Slaughter," and
the city be made " a wonder and a hissing," and be
pressed with such a famine, that parents would be
driven to support life on their children's flesh ; — then
to break the earthen vessel in the sight of his compan
ions, and repeat the declaration that Jehovah would
" break this people and this city, as one breaks a pot
ter's vessel, which cannot be made whole again," and
make the houses which had been the scenes of idol-
worship as filthy and loathsome as Tophet, which
good Josiah had defiled by making it a receptacle for
carrion. But the sentence denounced in the valley
of Hinnom was equally in place " in the court of the
house of Jehovah." There equally, before the throne
of Jehovah's own presence, at the central point of the
nation's union and power, it was fit that they should
be warned of all the evils which Jehovah was " about
to bring upon this city and upon all the cities belong
ing to it," because they had stiffened their necks, and
refused to hearken to his words. And so the thoughts
which had been kindled in his mind by the dismal
scenery of Tophet he failed not to proclaim aloud in
the city's most public resort.*
* With Jer. xix. 5, 6, comp. vii. 31-34. With xix. 12, 13, comp. 2
Kings xxiii. 10.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. 329
Whether the incident related at the beginning of
the twentieth chapter, the arrest and imprisonment of
Jeremiah by an officer of the temple, is represented as
having been occasioned by resentment of any particu
lar remonstrance of the prophet, referred to at the end
of the last chapter, or of the general strain of his re
bukes, does not, I think, appear ; nor is it at all ma
terial whether, with reference to the decision of this
question, the two chapters be regarded as one composi
tion, or divided.* The first two verses and part of the
third I take to be prose narrative, furnishing the ex
planation, or argument, of the poem which begins in
the third verse, and occupies the rest of the chapter.
"Pashur  heard Jeremiah prophesying these
things ; then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and
put him in the stocks," from which he released him
the next day. Jeremiah has preserved the memory of
this occurrence by a composition in which he tells his
oppressor that his triumph will be short-lived, inas
much as a universal national ruin, in which he must
have his share, is rapidly approaching."]" Jeremiah
goes on to say, that such insults and wrongs have al
most discouraged him from any longer standing forth
as the champion of Jehovah's word ; they make him
weary of his life ; they tempt him to curse the day
when he was born; but he feels an inward impulse
which he cannot resist, and he will not cease to trust
that Jehovah will yet appear as his defender, and exe
cute signal vengeance on his persecutors. J
* " Pashur  heard Jeremiah prophesying these things " (xx. 1).
What things? Either what he said as related in xix. 15, or what he
was accustomed to say on all occasions, as we have seen throughout the
previous chapters.
f Jer. xx. 3-6. — " Not Pashur, but Magor-missabib " (3) ; i. e. " Not
Safety, but Terror all around." I shall recur to this passage towards the
close of the Fiftieth Lecture.
X xx. 7-18. — Comp. 14-18 with Job iii. 1 et seq., of which it is a
28*

330 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
The commentators have put themselves to much
pains to show that the poems preserved in the first
twenty chapters of the book belong to the early pe
riod of Jeremiah's public life. I think they have had
small success in this attempt, for want of sufficient
data. But, however it may have been with the pre
ceding portions, it is impossible to maintain that the
chronological order is observed any further than this
point, if we suppose the compositions to have been
produced contemporaneously with the occasions to
which they refer, for we have in the twenty-first chap
ter what purports to be a discourse of Jeremiah to
messengers sent to him by King Zedekiah, while the
contents of the following chapter are referred to the
earlier reign of Jehoiakim ; and there is a like inter
mixture of earlier and later dates throughout the rest
of the book.
Yet I must dissent altogether from that principle of
interpretation which has been so readily adopted, that
poems like that of which this book is mainly com
posed must be assumed to have been spoken or writ
ten down by their author at the time of the occur
rence of the events to which they respectively relate.
In the chapter before us, we have what, according to
the terms of the prose introduction,* if that be liter
ally interpreted, was the reply addressed orally, on the
spot, by Jeremiah, to certain royal messengers. For
this reason, and no other, as far as I can see, transla
tors who recognize the poetical character of the bulk
of the book arrange this chapter throughout as
prose composition. But it has every characteristic of

manifest imitation, if it should not rather be called a quotation. The verses
11 - 13 seem to belong after verses 14 - 18. But the abrupt changes of
passion do not require methodical sequence.
* Jer. xxi. 1-3.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. 1. -XXIV. 10. 331
poetry, and, compared with many others which are re
garded as of that class, contains a high poetical flight.
It is true that, if poetry, it can no longer be under
stood with any probability as literally the immediate
answer of Jeremiah to the messengers of Zedekiah.
But why should it be so regarded % On the contrary,
it appears to me altogether more reasonable to under
stand the facts to have stood thus ; — that Zedekiah, in
his panic at the approach of the Babylonish army,
sent to consult Jeremiah on the aspect of affairs ; that
the prophet returned him an answer of discourage
ment and rebuke, saying that the people were no
match for the invaders, and that they did not deserve
to be, for their sins had made them impotent ; and that
subsequently, perhaps much later, perhaps after the
captivity had shown that his forebodings were not
ill founded, he preserved in verse the memory of the
transaction, repeating the wholesome truths which he
had told the king, no longer in their plain, original
garb, but invested with the embellishments of poetry.
We shall thus understand the prose introduction,
whether from the prophet's or some other hand, as
declaring that, before the final disasters of the nation,
when all was in uncertainty and alarm, Jeremiah told
the king that, for the people's sins, Jehovah, whom
they might have had for their champion, would fight
against them, and destroy part, with their animals, by
a pestilence, and all the rest, to the last man, by the
edge of Nebuchadnezzar's sword, excepting however
such as should voluntarily give themselves up to the
Chaldeans.* The passage extending through the twenty-second
* It is probable that some later hand prefixed the prose introduction (on
what authority it is impossible for us now to know), as explaining the occasion
of the poem from Jeremiah's hand, which had been preserved.

332 JEREMIAH I. 1.- XXIV. 10. [LECT.
chapter and the first eight verses of the twenty-third
consists mainly of a strain of reproof and exhortation,
in the first part of which it is implied that the fate
of the nation is undetermined, and will depend on the
just or unjust administration of its rulers.* The au
thor with great particularity announces the Divine
vengeance against the Kings Shallum and Jehoiakim,
sons of Josiah, and against. Jeconiah his grandson,"]" and
finally declares that the national humiliation and dis
tress will be but temporary ; that the exiles shall at
length return to their ancient home, and a descendant
of David reign over them there in safety and peace.
The remainder of the twenty-third chapter, headed
with the inscription " concerning the prophets," is
simply a diatribe against false teachers. The writer
complains that the wicked people are emboldened by
the precept and example of still more wicked guides. J
The men of Jerusalem are as much betrayed and de
praved as the men of Samaria had been by those who
should give wholesome instruction, but who, instead of
doing so, " strengthen the hands of evil-doers," and
send " profaneness into all the land."§ To follow
them, unprofitable and treacherous as they are, is to
rush upon ruin.|| From the omnipresent and omnis
cient Jehovah, no evil-doer can hide himself.^" There
fore let those who pretend to speak his efficacious
* Jer. xxii. 1-5.
f No King Shallum, son of Josiah, is mentioned in the Books of Kings
or of Chronicles. But Josiah's son Jehoahaz was his immediate successor
(comp. 2 Kings xxiii. 30). It is taken for granted, accordingly, that Jere
miah knew him lo be also called by the other name, which, according to 1
Chron. iii. 15, belonged to Josiah's fourth son. — With' Jer. xxiii. 7, 8,
comp. xvi. 14, 15, of which passage the other is merely a repetition. —
The passages xxii. 10-12, xxii. 18, 19, xxii. 24-30, and xxiii. 5- 8, will
have further notice in the Fiftieth Lecture.
X xxiii. 9-12. § xxiii. 13-15.
I| xxiii. 16-22. Tf xxiii. 23-25.

XLVIII.] JEREMIAH I. l.-XXIV. 10. 333
word take care that they speak it truly,* and let
none speak of his true word as " a burden," if they
would not tempt his heavy displeasure, and learn that
Jehovah can crush them under a weight of woes.f
The twenty-fourth chapter, though printed as prose
by some translators who arrange other portions as
poetry, is in my view as clearly a poetical passage as
any so disposed. In the use of a common (but, in
this instance, tame enough) form of figurative lan
guage, Jeremiah, representing his compatriots of differ
ent characters under the images respectively of a bas
ket of very good figs, and another of figs too bad to
be eaten, goes on to say that Jehovah in due time
will restore to favor his penitent outcasts, and settle
them permanently and prosperously in the land of their
fathers, while the party represented by the fruit unfit
to eat, " Zedekiah, the king of Judah, and his princes,
and the residue of Jerusalem, those that are left in this
land, and those that dwell in the land of Egypt," shall
be abandoned to "vexation and affliction in all the
kingdoms of the earth," to reproaches, taunts, and
curses in all places of their exile, and be utterly con
sumed by famine, pestilence, and the sword. X
With the next chapter begins the different arrange
ment, referred to at the beginning of this Lecture,
* Jer. xxiii. 26-29.
f xxiii. 33 - 40. The Hebrew word NB'D means both a saying, or ora
cle, and a burden, or load; and the idea seems to be that, in the use of an
equivocal expression, the persons referred to spoke derisively of the warn
ings of Jeremiah and others honestly and piously disposed. But who can
believe that, in simple, prosaic truth, Jeremiah meant to say that for such a
mere, levity in expression (39, 40) the people and their city were to be cast
out of God's presence, and brought to endless contempt and shame 1
X The principal part of the first verse, " This was after Nebuchadnezzar,"
&c. (comp. 2 Kings xxiv. 11, &c), I take to have been originally a margi
nal note from a later hand. It was an easy inference from Jeremiah's own
language in the ninth verse.

334 JEREMIAH I. 1. — XXIV. 10. [LECT.
of the Hebrew and Septuagint texts. In that chapter
also we begin to read of what is called the Seventy
Years' Captivity, supposed to have been supernatu
rally predicted by Jeremiah, and, if so, justly claim
ing to be regarded as the principal topic of interest
in the book. In view of both these facts, it is proper
that we should pause here, to reconsider our principles
of interpretation.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1.- XXXV. 19. 335

LECTURE XLIX.
JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19.
Knowledge of .the Future, Proof of a Divine Communication. —
Nature of the Evidence requisite to prove Supernatural Fore
knowledge. — Most Plausible Argument for the Supernatural
Foreknowledge of the Prophets, derived from the Writings of
Jeremiah. — Uncertainty of the Text of his Writings. — Pre
diction of a Seventy Years' Captivity. — Explanations of Jere
miah's Designation of that Length of Time. — Inquiry whether
the Historical Facts sustain the Literal Interpretation of the
Supposed Prediction. — Peculiar Uncertainty of the Text in the
Passage relating to the Length of the Captivity. — Other Na
tions threatened with a Captivity of the Same Duration. — Pre
sentation of a Cup and of Yokes to Numerous Kings. — Repe
tition of Counsels, Threats, and Promises to the Jews. — Proc
lamation by Jeremiah in the Temple, and Danger incurred
thereby. — His Warnings to Zedekiah and several Neighbouring
Kings. — His Conference with Hananiah. — His Letter to his
Countrymen in. Captivity. — His Assurances to the Exiled Peo
ple of both Kingdoms of a Happy Reestablishment in their
own Country. — His Purchase of a Parcel of Land. — Renewed
Promises of a Restoration of the Kingdoms, of the Royalty of
David's Family, and of the Levitical Priesthood and Ritual. —
His Conversation with the King. — Threats of Destruction to
the Jews, for refusing to manumit their Slaves. — His Hospi
tality to certain Rechabites, and Moral drawn by him from
their Account of the Habits of their Family.
The great question in respect to the class of books
to which that of Jeremiah belongs is, whether they
indicate supernatural knowledge of future events on
the part of their authors. Man may form judgments
respecting the future. He may calculate tendencies
and chances, and calculate them wisely. But to know
the future belongs only to God. If any man should be

336 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
found to have possessed an acquaintance with future
events clearly beyond what is attainable by human
judgment and calculation, we should have to conclude
that he had received that knowledge directly and su
pernaturally from God ; and such a man would be
accredited to us as a Divine messenger just as much as
the doer of any other miracle.
The subject is so important, that I must be pardoned
for recurring to the principles necessary to be applied
when a case of supposed supernatural prescience is
presented. In order to hold reasonably the opinion, that a given
writing affords evidence of miraculous foreknowledge
on the part of its author, we must first have obtained
satisfaction on the following points : —
1. That we have the words in which the assumed
prediction was recorded. Here arise questions re
specting the genuineness of a writing, and the purity
of its text as it exists in our hands.
2. That we give to the words a correct interpreta
tion. If they are so obscure, or if they admit of such
a diversity of explanation, that we cannot confident
ly say what was the meaning in their writer's mind,
they furnish no basis for further argument.
3. That an event like what they described has taken
place. If we should have a premonition of a coming
event, we could not thence alone assume that it ever
befell as foretold. To say that we know it took place
because it was supernaturally predicted, and that it
must have been supernaturally foreknown because it
came to pass as predicted, would plainly be reasoning
in a vicious circle.
4. That the words were delivered at a time previ
ous to the occurrence of what they are believed to
describe. If the reverse is true, then clearly they are

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 337
not prediction, which is not within the reach of the
human faculties unaided ; they are history, which is.
5. The subsequent event, as history has made it
known to us, must have been at the time of its predic
tion so improbable, and the prediction and event must
correspond in so many and so minute particulars, as to
preclude the idea that the correspondence is merely
accidental, or that the foreknowledge Avas possessed in
an exercise of merely human sagacity, exerted on a
foundation of already existing principles and facts.
6. I add one more consideration, for the sake of
completeness, though of course without attributing to
it nearly so much importance as to any of the others :
We must not have cause to suspect that the assumed
prediction occasioned the fulfilment. Certainly it is
a supposable case, that, when words relating to the
future have been put on record, whether intended
originally to convey a pretension to supernatural fore
knowledge or not, there should be those in later times,
who, being acquainted with them, should be inter
ested in having them appear to have been prediction,
and should accordingly arrange, to that end, to bring
about an event like what they describe.
These are points to be carefully kept in view in a
consideration of the supposed supernatural predictions
in the Book of Jeremiah. To my mind, this book ap
pears to furnish much more plausible arguments than
any other in the collection of the Later Prophets, to
sustain the prevailing views respecting prophecy. Pos
sibly this may have been one motive with the Jews,
after the original design of the book came to be lost
sight of by them, for placing it, as in some instances
they did,* at the beginning of the collection. In Jere-

* See Vol. I. p. 40. I have suggested (p. 236, note f, and p. 303) a dif-
VOL. III. 29

338 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
miah's works, if in any, a reader would be likely to
suppose that he found authority for the supposition of
supernatural foreknowledge; and this character, at
tributed to his writings, would then easily come to be
transferred to others following them under the same
name, though those others, considered by themselves,
would not have seemed to call for such an interpreta
tion. We have seen in what a peculiar state the book of
Jeremiah has come down to us. The Septuagint ver
sion is our assurance, that, at the time when it was
made (probably in the second century before Christ),
there existed a text of this author's writings, materially
differing in arrangement, and not inconsiderably dif
fering in substance, from that which has been trans
mitted to us in the original tongue. Now this fact
not merely creates perplexity in a decision respecting
the genuine text in passages where the two authorities
are found to differ, but it affects with a degree of
doubt all arguments resting on the supposition of our
possessing, in their exact original state, even passages
in which no such discrepance occurs. It shows us, to
a certainty, that, for four centuries after Jeremiah
wrote, his writings were copied with so little care for
literal exactness, or else, that, from the first, there
were such different exemplars of them, — or both, —
that they are hardly a subject for that minute criti
cism, which, presuming~a precise form of words to have
been used, goes on to show that they describe subse
quent events in a manner to which only a directly
communicated Divine wisdom was adequate. The
argument in support of such an interpretation must
needs be, — "Here are the words which Jeremiah used,

ferent reason for this arrangement. But there is no inconsistency between
the two, and they may well have operated jointly.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 339
about the beginning of the sixth century before Christ ;
and there is an historian's relation of a more recent
event; and the former precisely describe the latter."
But how should we deal with an opponent who should
reply, — " You have no sufficient ground for maintain
ing that those are Jeremiah's words. You have estab
lished the general authenticity of the collection which
goes under his name. But it is undeniable that the
text is unsettled, because the two great authorities
considerably differ ; and through the same causes which
exposed them to corruption where they are actually
seen to differ, they were equally exposed to it, and may
have both earlier experienced it, where they are seen
to agree; and certainly, those portions which may
have treated, in a general way, of the future prospects
of the nation, were not the portions the least exposed
to interpolations from annotators' hands, — interpola
tions which, after an event had occurred, should make
the text speak a more definite language than what had
proceeded from the writer."
With these observations premised, I proceed to a
consideration of that passage in Jeremiah's twenty-
fifth chapter which speaks of a coming captivity of his
nation, to last seventy years.
The chapter begins with an introduction similar in
form to those which frequently occur in the book.
It declares that, in " the first year of Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon," whose brilliant character and acts,
in his father's lifetime, had probably attracted the
prophet's attention, Jeremiah addressed " the people of
Judah " in his accustomed strain of reproof and warn
ing. I have persevered, he said, in admonishing you
for more than twenty years, but all in vain. Other
teachers have addressed you in Jehovah's name. To
them, too, you have turned a deaf ear. Jehovah now

340 JEREMIAH XXV. 1.— XXXV. 19. [LECT.
declares that your day of grace is over, and your doom
is sealed.* " Behold, I will send and take all the nations of the
North, saith Jehovah, and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of
Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this
land and its inhabitants, and against all these nations
round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make
them an astonishment, and a hissing, and a perpetual
desolation. Yea, I will take from them the voice of
mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bride
groom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill-
s.tones, and the light of the lamp. And this whole land
shall be a desolation, and an astonishment ; and these
nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
" But when seventy years shall have passed, I will
punish the king of Babylon and his nation for their
iniquity, saith Jehovah, and the land of the Chaldeans,
and I will make it a perpetual desolation. And I will
bring upon that land all my words, which I have pro
nounced against it, all that is written in this book,
which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the na
tions. For they, even they, shall be brought into
subjection to many nations and great kings. I will
render to them according to their deeds, and according
to the works of their own hands." X
Here, it is argued, nothing can be understood short
of a pretension on the writer's part to be preternatu-
rally acquainted with the length of time to which a
coming servitude of his nation should be protracted.
He would not, it is said, have specified a definite num
ber of years, unless he had knowledge justifying him
in making that specification. And such knowledge
could only be obtained by miraculous revelation. Sup
pose that he could infer from the signs of the times
* Jer. xxv. 1-8. -j- xxv. 9 - 14.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 341
that the Israelites were about to be enslaved by the
Chaldeans, yet he could not know in any such way
how long the bondage was to last.
But, in the first place, it cannot be affirmed that ex
pressions of this sort necessarily denote a definite time.
The same number, seventy, occurs in passages where
certainly no one would be willing to make it the
foundation of a similar argument .* The truth is, that
the Jews were accustomed, as are other nations, to use
a definite number to express an indefinite and often an
unknown one, whether large or small, and the number
seven and its multiples was freely used by them in this
way.f Looking no further than this, it would not be
safe to deny that Jeremiah's purpose might have been
simply to forebode that the subjection to Babylon,
which he saw approaching, would not endure merely
long enough for a ravaging army to come and depart,
but would be a settled and determinate condition of
the people, and would last 'a considerable time. Isaiah
uses just the same language, in just the same meaning,
concerning Tyre.
" Howl, ye ships of Tarshish,
For your stronghold is destroyed !
And it shall come to pass in that day,
That Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years,
* For examples, see Gen. iv. 24 ; Matt, xviii. 22.
f For examples, see Gen. iv. 15 ; Lev. xxvi. 21, 24, 28 ; Ruth iv. 15 ;
1 Sam. ii. 5 ; Ps. xii. 6 ; cxix. 164 ; Prov. xxiv. 16 ; xxvi. 25 ; Is. iv. 1 ;
Jer. xv. 9 ; Ezek. xxxix. 9, 12 ; Zech. iii. 9 ; Matt. xii. 45. Other num
bers, though less frequently, were used in the same way, as ten (see Gen.
xxxi. 7 ; Lev. xxvi. 26 ; Numb. xiv. 22 ; Neh. iv. 12 ; Job xix. 3 ;
Eccles. vii. 19 ; Zech. viii. 23 ; and comp. Deut. xxiii. 3 with Neh. xiii. 1)
and forty (see Ezek. xxix. 11-13). On the subject of this Hebrew use,
see Glass, " Philologia Sacra," Tom. I. p. 1258 (edit. Dath.). So the
English say, " once and again." So, for a considerable or a large number,
they use indefinitely the words, a dozen ; twenty ; fifty ; a hundred ; a
thousand. So the Romans said, " sexcenties," six hundred times, meaning
very often.
29*

342 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
According to the days of one king ;
But at the end of seventy years
There shall be a song of Tyre, as of a harlot :
' Take thy lyre, go about the city,
0 harlot, long forgotten !
Make sweet melody ; sing many songs,
That thou mayst again be remembered ! '
At the end of seventy years shall Jehovah have regard to Tyre,
And she shall return to her hire,
And play the harlot with all the kingdoms of the world,
That are upon the face of the earth." — Is. xxiii. 14- 17.
The seventy years of Tyrian subjection are as dis
tinctly spoken of here as the seventy years of Jewish
captivity by Jeremiah. Yet I suppose no one pretends
to defend the former statement in a literal sense. The
overthrow of Tyre, if it took place, preceded that of
Babylon by less than half the time specified.*
But, if we seek a more special propriety in Jere
miah's selection of these words, I apprehend that there
are two or three ways in which they may not unnatu
rally be explained, quite independently of any suppo
sition that he pretended to a supernatural knowledge
of the future.
At a previous period of the Jewish history, the time
of the wanderings in Arabia, a national punishment for
a national crime continued through forty years. The
prophet had now occasion to charge the people with
more offensive sin, demanding that a heavier visitation
should fall upon them ; and to say, that, whereas they
had then suffered forty years, they now deserved to
suffer seventy, would be to state a comparison of more
with less, of precisely the same nature with that which
is stated in passages just now referred to in the Books
of Genesis and Matthew.
Again, seventy years was the Jewish estimation of
the length of human life ; f and it seems no inadmissi-
* See above, p. 217. j Ps. xc. 10.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. - XXXV. 19. 343
bly bold use of language for a writer to say, without
designing an exact definition of years, " Your sins are
so great, that you may expect your nation to be chas
tised for them through a time long enough for a whole
generation to appear and disappear." *
Again, Jeremiah may have designed to give empha
sis to his threat, by adapting the particular terms in
which it is expressed to the terms of the second pre
cept of the Decalogue, in which God denounces pun
ishment against idolatry extending to " the third and
fourth generation." The great-grandson of a man
who has within a year become a parent will be of full
age at the end of seventy years, supposing twenty-five
years to intervene in each case between the birth of
father and son; and, supposing an interval of more
years, still the great-grandson will have been born be
fore seventy years expire ; and accordingly, to name
" seventy years " of punitive visitation is the same
thing as to say that it will involve four generations,
agreeably to the terms of the second commandment.
But, it will be urged, Is it not extraordinary that,
when Jeremiah had spoken beforehand of a Jewish
servitude to endure seventy years, a servitude actually
succeeded which did continue just that length of
time1? I shall not hesitate to allow that this is a striking
fact, when it has been first made out to be a fact. But
it is unavoidable to infer that there must be some great
* What may perhaps be regarded as a curious confirmation of this inter
pretation occurs in the Septuagint reading of Is. xxiii. 15. For the Hebrew,
" Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years,
According to the days of one king,"
the Septuagint reads, —
" Tyre shall be held seventy years,
According to the time of a king,
According to the time of a man."

344 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
difficulty in establishing it, or — what is more to the
purpose — that there must be some great uncertainty
about its evidence, when we find diligent and learned
commentators, alike persuaded that there was a cap
tivity of seventy years, supernaturally predicted before
hand, yet differing as to the points of time when it is
to be understood as having begun and ended, and even,
indeed, — because an assumed period of seventy years,
corresponding in some degree with the terms of one
Scriptural passage, will not sustain the comparison
with another, — explaining the incongruity on the
supposition of two different periods of this kind, em
bracing an equal interval.* It is not for want of his
torical data that a seventy years' servitude of the Isra
elites to the Chaldeans is not shown, but because such
well-ascertained data as we have do not admit of being
satisfactorily accommodated to the received theory, f
The most obvious reckoning of the Jewish captivity,
and that which I apprehend would unhesitatingly be
adopted, if there were no theory to be served by a dif
ferent, is from the year 588 B. C, when the govern
ment was subverted, the city sacked, the temple
burned, and the people led away, to the year 536, the
first year of Cyrus, when he gave the exiles permission
* So Blayney (in Jer. xxv. 11) : — " That the seventy years of Zechariah
were the same with those which had before been the subject of Jeremiah's
predictions, cannot possibly be admitted."
•)• If I read the Books of Daniel and Zechariah rightly (Dan. ix. 2, Zeeh.
vii. 5), supposing the latter to refer to this passage of Jeremiah, their au
thors by no means understood Jeremiah's "seventy years" in the definite
sense of later commentators. (See my remarks on those texts in their prop
er place.) So Zechariah, writing in 520 B. C.,or later, speaks (i. 12) of
seventy years of national suffering as only then expiring, Or just expired. A
still more curious and important commentary on Jeremiah's language occurs
in the apocryphal Book of Baruch, in what purports to be " a copy of an
epistle which Jeremiah sent unto them which were to be led captives into
Babylon by the king of the Babylonians." Jeremiah is here represented to
have written thus : — " Because of the sins which ye have committed before

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 345
to return. But these dates begin and end a term, not
of seventy years, but of fifty-two.
If still keeping to the same terminus ad quern, that
is, the date of Cyrus's decree of emancipation, we, in
stead of the time of the final and complete subjugation
of the Israelites under Zedekiah, in 588, go back, for a
terminus a quo, to the time of Jeconiah, when a partial
deportation took place,* we obtain only sixty-two
years ; and besides, it is hard to show how the period
described in the strong language of Jeremiah"]" can
possibly include, as it would be necessary on this hy
pothesis that it should, the eleven years' reign of Zed
ekiah, during one part of which Judea, so far from
being depopulated, enjoyed the protection of Babylon
as a tributary state, and during another part asserted
its independence in arms against that empire.
This latter remark of course holds with increased
force against the most commonly received hypothesis,
which goes back for its terminus a quo to a subjuga
tion of Judea by the Babylonians in the reign of Je
hoiakim.:!: This is, I think, no better than an arbitra
ry selection among the different dates of Jewish disas
ter which run through a term of years in this portion
of their history, being fixed upon as agreeing better
God, ye shall be led away captives into Babylon by Nabuchodonosor, king
of the Babylonians. So when ye be come into Babylon, ye shall remain there
many years, and for a long season, namely, seven generations; and after that
I will bring you away peaceably from thence." (Bar. vi. 1 -3.) Now this
author was a Jew, and doubtless acquainted with the opinions of his nation.
And one of two things must be assumed concerning his language, both
equally fatal to the interpretation commonly put on the language of Jere
miah. Either the author of the Book of Baruch remembered Jeremiah's
language correctly, and then he did not understand it literally, as Christian
commentators have done ; or else he did not remember it correctly, a state
of mind on his part entirely inconsistent with the supposition of its being
understood in his age, in the sense in which it is understood now, as defining
the duration of a passage so important in the history of the nation.
* 2 Kings xxiv. 14. f Jer. xxv. 9-11. J 2 Kings xxiv. 1.

346 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
than any other with the hypothesis of a captivity of
seventy years. If it did, therefore, precisely meet the
case in the particular of time, the case would not be
made out, inasmuch as it would remain to be asked,
why this period should be fixed on, rather than others,
for the standard of comparison with Jeremiah's words,
unless it were that those words were previously as
sumed to contain a supernatural prediction, with which
the event must needs have corresponded, — an assump
tion which would present a clear instance of reasoning
in a circle.
But it does not make out the case, even in the par
ticular of time. A space of seventy years antecedent
to Cyrus's decree brings us to the year 606 B. C, and
in this year accordingly the subjugation of Jehoiakim
and his people by Nebuchadnezzar is placed by the
commentators ; and this chiefly, if not wholly, on the
authority of a text in Daniel,* which refers it to " the
third year of Jehoiakim." But whatever else may be
thought of the text in Daniel, it is certain that it does
not fix the date of the event alluded to in the passage
of Jeremiah before us, since it refers the event of which
it speaks to "the third year" of Jehoiakim, while Jere
miah, prophesying, as is expressly said,"]" "in the fourth
year " of Jehoiakim, speaks of what he has in view as
still future. Independently of this, it would seem not
easy to reconcile the date in Daniel with the passage
in the Second Book of Kings,J from which we infer
that a rebellion of Jehoiakim against Nebuchadnezzar,
which speedily terminated in his defeat and death, was
preceded by a period of but three years' servitude,
making the servitude to have begun (since Jehoiakim
died in 599 B. C.) in the year 602 or 603, or sixty-
* Dan. i. 1. f Jer- xxv- 1- J 2 Kings xxiv. 1-6.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 347
six or sixty-seven years before Cyrus's decree. And,
once more, though I have hitherto reasoned as if the
date of the emancipation of the Jews by Cyrus was that
from which the term of seventy years is to be reck
oned back by whosoever conceives that such a reck
oning is to be made, I now- submit that, according to
the express terms of the passage before us, taken as it
stands, it clearly is not so ; but, on the contrary, the
date of the downfall of Belshazzar along with that of
his capital is the terminus ad quern. For the words are,
"When seventy years are accomplished, I will visit
upon the king of Babylon and upon his nation, saith
Jehovah, their iniquity." Now the king of Babylon
fell, not in 536 B. C, but in 539, which requires a fur
ther reduction of three years to be made in the time
reckoned from the captivity.
I am unable, therefore, to allow that an interval of
seventy years can be shown to have occurred between
events which Jeremiah's language can be shown to de
scribe. But if any one is of a different opinion, I
have yet two considerations to suggest to him. In
the first place, supposing his calculation to be correct,
as to dating the beginning of the series of seventy
years in the year 606 B. C, there can be no doubt that
Cyrus, living so near to the time, knew that that was
the year from which the Jews began the reckoning of
their time of servitude. Now Cyrus was certainly not
unskilled in arts of policy, and for purposes of state
he appears to have taken no small pains to conciliate
the Jews. Will any one undertake, then, to declare it
to be improbable, that, for the sake of recommending
himself to them, he fixed on the year when seventy
years had expired to proclaim their emancipation, thus ,
presenting himself to them in the winning light of
God's instrument in fulfilling certain language of one

348 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
of their revered sages, according to its literal terms ]
On this supposition, Jeremiah's language, having itself
become the cause of its own literal fulfilment (though
intended for no such use), would of course sustain no
argument of supernatural inspiration.*
But, once more, if it could be shown — which, on
so many accounts, I have been urging that it cannot —
that there was supernatural inspiration in the case, it
would remain to be asked whether it was the inspira
tion of Jeremiah, which I see no cause to admit, or
that of Moses, of which I entertain no doubt. The
author of the Books of Chrpnicles,"]" in a quite clear
reference to the Law, shows that he understood Moses
there as declaring that the people, when their disobe
dience should require it, were to go into captivity for
a period one seventh part as long as that during which
the observance of the Sabbatical year had been neg
lected by them. Now I do not urge that this is a
sound exposition of Moses's words. I do not so esteem
it. But I should find it much easier and more reason
able to allow that it was so, and that Jeremiah's sup
posed knowledge of the future was founded on it, than
to suppose, in the absence of other proof, that the lat
ter writer was the subject of direct supernatural illu
mination. On this ground, if there was miraculous
prediction, Moses was the prophet, and not Jeremiah,
who did but publish the result of a calculation found
ed on his words. And so I think the author of Chron
icles understood it. He shows that his opinion was,
that the Sabbatical year had, at the time of the captiv
ity, been neglected for four hundred and ninety years,
that is, from about the time of David. Now, if he
* This is to represent Cyrus in precisely the character in which he is ex
hibited by the pseudo-Isaiah in xliv. 26-28.
¦j- Comp. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21 with Lev. xxvi. 34.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1.- XXXV. 19. 349
knew this, Jeremiah knew it equally ; and, supposing
the correctness of the interpretation given by the
writer of Chronicles to the language of Moses, it was
Moses who dictated to Jeremiah, through a simple pro
cess in figures, the length of time that the captivity
was to endure.
After the threat of a seventy years' servitude, Jere
miah proceeds : — " But when seventy years shall have
passed, I will punish the king of Babylon and his na
tion for their iniquity, saith Jehovah, and the land of
the Chaldeans, and I will make it a perpetual desola
tion. And I will bring upon that land all my words,
which I have pronounced against it, all that is written
in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against
all the nations. For they, even they, shall be brought
into subjection to many nations and great kings. I will
render to them according to their deeds, and accord
ing to the works of their own hands." *
If we adopt such an interpretation of the words
" seventy years " as to understand it to be a definite
number put for an indefinite, the interpretation of
these verses is attended with no peculiar difficulty.
We shall then regard them as declaring that at the
end of many years Babylon, like all other oppressive
states, was at length to be called to share the fate of
the nations which she had wronged."]" As it had made
them " a perpetual desolation," it should be itself
made a perpetual desolation. J And that the inten
tion of greater accuracy is not to be supposed in con
sequence of the event having turned out exactly
* Jer. xxv. 12 - 14.
j This is uniformly the case with empires which rise suddenly through
the talents of some distinguished leader to great military power, as Babylon
had done ; and Jeremiah, in predicting this concerning Chaldea, did just
what wise men kept predicting from 1800 to 1815 concerning France.
X Jer. xxv. 9, 12.
VOL. III. 30

350 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
as the words, literally taken, <lescri.be it, we have
already seen in our remarks upon the points of time
from and to which the seventy years admit of being
reckoned. But I have now to add, that, independently of the
general uncertainty, greater or less, which attaches to
the text of this book, there are peculiar reasons for
distrusting the exactness of this particular portion of
it. It will not fail to be observed, that the verses
which we are now considering occur precisely at that
place in the book at which the difference of arrange-
-ment between the Hebrew and the Septuagint begins.
One scheme which has been proposed for accounting
for this difference supposes that the parts of the book
were originally separate volumes, of which the portion
extending to the end of the fourteenth verse of the
twenty-fifth chapter was one, and that, when they were
brought together by different hands, it was done, as
might have been expected, in different methods of ar
rangement. If this were the case, then it becomes ex
tremely probable that these last three verses were a more
recent addition to this portion, just as the fifty-second
chapter was to another portion, as probably all critics
allow, and as indeed is the same as declared.* And
allowing that this scheme cannot be proved, at all
events the place where different copies present a dif
ferent connection, as the Hebrew and Septuagint here
do, would be precisely the place where, if anywhere,
we should reasonably look for interpolations.
Again, we read in the thirteenth verse that which
can hardly have been written by Jeremiah. It is as
follows : — "I will bring upon this [or, that] land all
my words, which I have pronounced against it, all that

* Viz. in Jer. li. 64.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 351
is written in this [or, that] book, which Jeremiah hath
prophesied against all the nations." I do not urge the
peculiarity of Jeremiah's having spoken of himself
here in the third person. In that circumstance, likely
or not, does not rest the stress of the argument.
These words occur in the twenty-fifth chapter, whereas
it is in the thirty-sixth that we are told of his having
first committed his prophecies to writing. And, as if
to remove all uncertainty upon this point, both trans
actions are precisely dated. It was in the fifth year of
King Jehoiakim, and in its ninth month, that Jere
miah's book was first produced ; * whereas it was in
the fourth year of King Jehoiakim-]" that this refer
ence was made to a book already prepared, if that ref
erence proceeded from the hand of Jeremiah. Upon
these grounds the genuineness of this verse has been
very generally denied by commentators, who had no
view to that use which I am now making of the ad
mission. But if that verse be spurious, intimately
connected as it is with the verse which precedes as
well as with that which follows it, who will undertake
confidently to say that the immediate context is gen
uine writing of Jeremiah's 1
This consideration is confirmed by another, namely,
that the three verses now in question greatly disturb
the connection as Ave have it in the Hebrew. With
out them, the eleventh and fifteenth verses, coming in
to juxtaposition, would read as follows : — " These na
tions shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years ; J
for thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me : Take
the wine-cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all

* Jer. xxxvi. 9. f xxv. 1.
{ I insert the words "seventy years," though I think it probable that
they should go with the following passage (verses 12 -14), if the latter be
condemned as spurious.

352 JEREMIAH XXV, 1, — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
the nations to whom I send thee to drink it." The
verses that intervene, touching another subject, make a
mere interruption of what without them is a most an
imated passage, owing its animation mainly to its unity
and compactness.
Once more, the authorities actually do leave the
text of this passage very unsettled. As it stands in the
common edition of the Septuagint, it does not so much
as mention Nebuchadnezzar or the Chaldeans from first
to last. In the ninth verse it reads, " I will take a
family from the north, and will bring them against
this land," &c. In the eleventh, " The whole land
shall be a desolation, and they shall serve the Gentiles
[or, among the Gentiles] seventy years." In the twelfth,
" When the seventy years are accomplished, I will pun
ish that nation, and will make them an everlasting deso
lation." In the thirteenth, " And I will bring upon that
land all my words, which I have pronounced against it,
all the things Written in this book, which Jeremiah hath
prophesied against the nations of Elam." And then
it proceeds with those threats against Elam, — not
Babylon, — which occupy in the Hebrew the last six
verses of the forty-ninth chapter. If we should adopt
the Septuagint text, and not the Hebrew, (and who
shall say that the former is not the purer df the two %)
would it not be clear that it was of an Elamitish, that
is, Persian, and not a Babylonish, captivity of seventy
years that we must understand Jeremiah to have
spoken"? And even as to the Hebrew, which intro
duces the names of Nebuchadnezzar and his empire*
the English reader may well be surprised to be told
that there is a peculiarity of expression in one in
stance which is entirely disguised in our translation.
The ninth verse, literally rendered, reads, " Behold, I
will send and take all the families of the north, saith

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 353
the Lord, even to or against,* Nebuchadnezzar, king of
Babylon, my servant," &c.
I have still to add, before leaving this subject, that,
in order to prove the possession of supernatural knowl
edge by Jeremiah, from his mention of a seventy years'
captivity of the Jews, the commentators needed to do
much more than they have at all presumed to under
take. If Jeremiah's words are to be construed in this
sense, it is not only into Jewish history that we are to
look to justify them. His language, in the received text,
is, " These nations shall serve the king of Babylon sev
enty years." f What nations % The context explains.
" I will send and take all the nations of the North,
 and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, 
and will send them against all these nations round
about-X  And these nations shall serve the king
of Babylon seventy years." In order to establish Jere
miah's character for foreknowledge on the terms pro
posed by the common theory, it would be necessary to
undertake investigations in the history of all " those
nations," similar to what have have been so laboriously
conducted in the history of the Jews.
The twenty-fifth chapter next presents a passage im
portant as throwing light on the principles of interpre
tation of these writings.
" Thus hath Jehovah, the God of Israel, said to me :
Take this cup of the wine of wrath from my hand, and
let all the nations to which I shall send thee drink of
it. Let them drink, and stagger, and become mad be
cause of the sword which I am about to send among
them. So I took the cup from the hand of Jehovah,
and gave it to all the nations to drink, to which Jeho-
* Not nxi, but Sxi, and the 1 is omitted in some copies.
f Jer. xxv. 11. X xxv- 9i comp. 15-26.
30*

354 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
vah sent me ; to Jerusalem and to the cities of Judah,
and to the kings thereof, and the princes thereof, to
make them a desolation, and an astonishment, and a
hissing, and a curse [as it is this day]. To Pharaoh,
king of Egypt, and to his servants, and to his princes,
and to all his people, and all the allied people ; and
to all the kings of the land of Uz, and to all the kings
of the land of the Philistines, and to Askelon, and
to Gaza, and to Ekron, and to the remnant of Ash-
dod; to Edom, and to Moab, and to the children of
Ammon ; and to all the kings of Tyre, and to all the
kings of Sidon, and to the kings of the lands which are
beyond the sea ; to Dedan, and to Tema, and to Buz,
and to all that shave the cheek ; and to all the kings of
Arabia, and to all the kings of the allied people who
dwell in the desert ; and to all the kings of Zimri, and
to all the kings of Elam, and to all the kings of Media ;
and to all the kings of the North, those that are near
and those that are afar off with respect to each other,
and to all the kingdoms of the earth which are upon
the face of the ground ; and the king of Sheshach shall
drink after them.
" And say to them, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the
God of Israel : Drink ye, and be drunken, and vomit,
and fall to rise no more because of the sword which I
am about to send among you. And if they refuse to
take the cup from thy hand to drink, then say to them,
Thus saith Jehovah of hosts : Ye shall surely drink !
For, behold, upon the city which is called by my
name I begin to bring evil ; and shall ye go wholly
unpunished ] Ye shall not go unpunished ; for I am
about to call the sword upon all the inhabitants of the
earth, saith Jehovah of hosts. Therefore, prophesy
against them all these words, and say to them : —

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1.- XXXV. 19. 355
" Jehovah shall roar from on high,
From his holy habitation shall he utter his voice ;
He shall roar aloud against his dwelling-place ;
A shout like that of vintagers shall he raise
Against all the inhabitants of the earth," &c*
Of the same character is the following, a little fur
ther on : —
" In the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, the son
of Josiah, king of Judah, came this word to Jeremiah
from Jehovah.
" Thus saith Jehovah to me : Make thee bands and
yokes, and put them upon thy neck, and send them to
the king of Edom, and to the king of Moab, and to
the king of the children of Ammon, and to the king of
Tyre, and to the king of Zidon, by the hands of the
messengers that are come to Jerusalem, to Zedekiah,
king of Judah. And command them to say to their
masters, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Is
rael : Thus shall ye say to your masters : The earth,
and the men and the beasts which are upon the earth,
have I made by my great power and my outstretched
arm, and I give it to whomsoever it seemeth meet to
me. And now I give all these lands into the hands of
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant ; the
beasts of the field also I give him to serve him," «&c."("
I refer with confidence to these passages for proof
that it is impossible to insist on literally interpreting
the words of Jeremiah, and other writers of his class,
for the mere reason that, as far as the form of lan
guage goes, it appears to describe some real transac
tion. In the former passage, in terms as express and
positive as language affords, Jeremiah declares that he
took a cup from the hand of Jehovah, and presented it
to some scores or hundreds of kings, — some of them
* Jer. xxv. 15-30. f xxvii. 1-6.

356 JEREMIAH XXV. 1.- XXXV. 19. [LECT.
kings of quite distant realms, — he having been in
structed by Jehovah so to do, and at the same time to
bid them drink to repletion, and inform them that
Jehovah " from his holy habitation " would raise " a
shout like that of vintagers against all the inhabitants
of the earth." In the latter, he declares himself with
equal explicitness to have been directed to make to
several monarchs a distribution of bands and yokes.
It is impossible to name any reason for interpreting
the first chapter of the book (for instance) as literal
narrative, which would not equally apply to these pas
sages. Yet what sane person thinks of so construing
them I
The remaining half of the book consists of poetry
more largely interspersed with prose narrative. The
poems, with the exception of those contained in six
chapters at the close, deal with the same narrow range
of topics which Ave have heretofore seen treated with
the same copious repetition. Counsels to the Jews to
submit peaceably to the overpowering force of Baby
lon, threats, conditional or absolute, of utter extirpa
tion and ruin, and occasional intimations of a distant
happy future for both the kingdoms, for Israel or
Ephraim and for Judah, make the staple of these com
positions. The twenty-sixth chapter describes the prophet as
having been constrained by a Divine impulse to sta
tion himself " in the court of the house of Jehovah,"
and remonstrate with the votaries there congregated
" from all the cities of Judah," threatening that, if they
continued impenitent, Jehovah would make Jerusalem
as desolate as, for a similar reason, he had, by the
Assyrian arms, already made Shiloh.* The conse-
* Jer. xxvi. 1-6. — "Then will I make this house like Shiloh " (6) ;
comp. vii. 12- 15.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 357
quence is related to have been, that " the priests, and
the prophets, and all the people " seized upon him
and threatened him with death. "The princes of
Judah," however, interposed, and suffered him to plead
his cause. He said that he was but declaring Jehd^
vah's purposes, who was as merciful as just, and would
forgive them if they would but amend their ways ;
that, for himself, he was helpless in their hands ; but
that, if they should take his life, they would bring
innocent blood upon themselves and all the dwellers
in the city.* Whereupon, calling to mind the wise
and beneficial use which Hezekiah, instead of being
incensed, had made of similar expostulations of the
prophet Micah, " certain elders of the land " addressed
the assembly in his behalf. Also, " the hand of Ahi-
kam, the son of Shaphan, was with Jeremiah, that he
should not be delivered into the hand of the people."
And thus he escaped the fate of " Urijah, the son of
Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim," who by a similar pro
ceeding had provoked on the part of the same mon
arch, Jehoiakim, so inveterate a displeasure, that, hav
ing caused him to be dragged back from Egypt, to
which he had fled, he " slew him with the sword, and
cast his dead body into the graves of the common
people." X
In the twenty-seventh chapter the prophet repre
sents himself, after the deportation in the time of Je
hoiachin, and the establishment of Zedekiah on the
throne, as having been divinely moved to send a mes
sage to the kings of several neighbouring nations,
informing them that Jehovah, the Maker of the earth
* Jer. xxvi. 7-15.
f xxvi. 16-24. — " Micah, the Morasthite, prophesied in the days of
Hezekiah, king of Judah,  saying, ' Thus saith Jehovah of hosts :
Zion shall be ploughed as a field,' " &c. (18); comp. Mic. iii. 12.

358 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
and of all its inhabitants, human and bestial, had
given it and them to the dominion of Nebuchadnezzar
and his posterity, to serve him till the time should
come for his own similar overthrow and subjection;
that, whatever their prophets, diviners, and soothsay
ers might say to the contrary, their only safety lay in
submission to him ; for Jehovah would punish resist
ance to Nebuchadnezzar with sword, famine, and
pestilence, and reward a ready surrender to him with
prosperity and quiet.* He proceeds to say that he
gave the same counsel and the same warnings " to
Zedekiah, king of Judah," "(" " to the priests also, and
to all the people " ; adding, in his address to the latter,
that the assurances given by other prophets of a speedy
restoration of the sacred vessels lately carried to Baby
lon were false; and that the intercessions of those
prophets would not so much as save from a similar
robbery those rich ornaments and utensils which were
still left in the temple and the royal palace. $
According to the narrative which next follows, a
certain "Hananiah, the son of Azur the prophet,
who was of Gibeon," in the fourth year of Zede-
kiah's reign, addressed himself publicly to Jeremiah,

* Jer. xxvii. 1-11. — "In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim " (1) ; •
so say all the Hebrew manuscripts but one, which reads Zedekiah, as does
the Syriac version. The emendation seems a perfectly safe one (comp.
3, 12, 20) ; but the necessity for it illustrates the faulty condition in which
the text of this book has been transmitted to us. — " Thus saith Jehovah to
me, ' Make thee bands and yokes,' " &c. (2, 3) ; I have remarked on this
representation above, p. 355.
f xxvii. 12 - 15.
X xxvii. 16-22. — " There shall they [the vessels] be until the day
when I shall visit them, saith Jehovah ; then will I bring them up, and
restore them to this place " (22) ; these words are not in the Septuagint
version ; they are probably not genuine, but a gloss, written perhaps after
the transaction recorded in Ezra i. 7- 11. If genuine, then they probably
had a share in occasioning the proceeding of Cyrus.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. l.-XXXV. 19. 359
" in the presence of the priests, and of all the people,"
declaring that within two years the Babylonian power
would be broken, and the captive king be brought
back to Jerusalem, with his subjects, and the treasures
rifled from the temple* Jeremiah replied, that he
wished it might be so ; that, as to himself, he had no
such hope, but that Hananiah would be entitled to
the praise of a true prognosticator, if the event should
accord with his words."]" Upon this Hananiah took
from Jeremiah's neck a yoke, which it seems that
prophet wore, perhaps as a symbol of that continued
subjugation of his people which he persisted in de
claring, and, breaking it, repeated his proclamation
that within two years Nebuchadnezzar's yoke should
be broken from the neck of the captive nations. Jere
miah did not pursue the altercation, but afterwards
found himself moved to tell the bold demagogue that
what he had broken was but a yoke of wood, while
Jehovah would bend the necks of the nations to
Nebuchadnezzar under a yoke of iron, — and to add,
that, for his delusive vaunts, which were no less than
" rebellion against Jehovah," he should die that year ;
which event accordingly took place.J
The next chapter contains a copy of a letter which
Jeremiah, availing himself of the opportunity of an
embassy sent by Zedekiah to Nebuchadnezzar, is re
lated to have addressed " to the residue of the elders
of the captivity, and to the priests, and to the proph
ets, and to all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had
carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon." In
* Jer. xxviii. 1-4. , f xxviii. 5-9.
X xxviii. 10-17. — "Hananiah the prophet died in the same year, in
the seventh month " (17) ; the Septuagint reading is less precise, " and he
died in the seventh month." For remarks on this passage see below,
p. 386.

360 JEREMIAH XXV. L — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
it he advises the exiles to make themselves contented
in their new home; to build houses, plant gardens,
rear and establish families, seek and pray for the pros?
perity of Babylon as their own, and give no heed to
the deceitful teachers who would persuade them to a
different course.* " For," he continues, " thus saith
Jehovah : Surely when seventy years shall be com-.
pleted for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will perform
for you my good promise, that I would bring you again
to this place. For I know the designs which I have
in mind concerning you, designs of good and not of
evil, to give you a happy end, and fulfil your hopes..
Then ye shall call upon me, and go in peace ; ye shall
pray to me, and I will hear you; ye shall seek me,
and find me, when ye search for me with all your
heart. And I will be found by you, saith Jehovah,
and I will bring you back from captivity, and I will
gather you from all the nations, and from all the pla
ces whither I have driven you, saith Jehovah ; and I
will bring you again to the place whence I caused you
to be carried away captive.""]"
Most of the remarks which were made on the ear
lier passage of similar tenor X are equally applicable
to this. I will but add, first, that in other parts of
this chapter, though not in this portion, there are ma
terial differences between the Hebrew and Septuagint
readings, showing that the text cannot be relied upon ;
and, secondly, that the time after which Ave must be
gin to reckon the " seventy years," if we undertake to
reckon them at all, is here precisely specified. The
exiles here addressed are declared to be those who
were " carried away captive from Jerusalem to Baby
lon, after the departure of Jeconiah the king," &c.§

* Jer. xxix. 1-9. f xxix. 10-14.
X Comp. p. 339 et seq. § xxix. 1, 2.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. l.-XXXV. 19. 361
The earliest period, then, from which we may begin to
reckon is the year 598 B. C, from which the space of
time to the year 536, the most favorable limit at the
other extremity, falls altogether too much within sev
enty years to justify the idea of exact prediction.
The letter proceeds with declaring that, so far from
fulfilling the imprecations which Jewish prophets, cap
tive at Babylon, had uttered against that kingdom, it
was the purpose of Jehovah to visit that portion of the
people which still remained at Jerusalem, and their
king, with SAVord, famine, pestilence, exile, and univer
sal contempt, because they had not heeded the admo
nitions addressed to them by his prophets.* And it
concludes with what, according to the common inter
pretation, are threats against three false teachers by
name. Two of them are told that, for their impurities
and deceptions, they shall be put to death by Nebu
chadnezzar, by being " roasted in the fire," and their
miserable fate become a by-word among their people ; f
the third is warned that, because he had falsely writ
ten to the people and priests at Jerusalem, exhorting
them, and especially the acting high-priest, to imprison
honest teachers, and to silence Jeremiah, therefore,
and for his false teachings at Babylon, his line should
soon become extinct, and no offspring of his live long
enough to see the good which Jehovah designed to
bring upon his people.J If this is the correct inter
pretation of the passage, we have no knowledge that
the threats were ever fulfilled.
The two next following chapters constitute one po-

* Jer. xxix. 15-19. — "I will make them like vile figs" (17) ; comp.
xxiv. 8.
f xxix. 20-23.
X xxix. 24-32. — "Zephaniah, the. son of Maaseiah the priest" (25) ;
comp. 2 Kings xxv. 18 ; Jer. xxi. 1 ; xxxvii. 3.
VOL. III. 31

362 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
em, which the author represents himself as having felt
divinely moved to commit to writing, as if to testify
the correctness of his anticipations, when the events
expected by him should occur.* But certain it is that
those expectations never have been fulfilled even so
much as in their general tenor, and that some of them
have been contradicted by the event.
In this composition it is declared, with that large
amplification of poetical imagery and phrase which we
have repeatedly seen employed in the treatment of the
same subject, that, after having sufficiently punished
the sinners of both kingdoms, " Israel and Judah," by
means of the captivity which both are now enduring,f
Jehovah, with signal manifestations of his power in
vengeance on their enemies,! will restore to them his
favor, will " break the yoke " of strangers from their
necks, will bring them back to their own country, will
reestablish them there securely under " David, their
king," and visit them there with perpetual and un
clouded prosperity.^ Natural and agreeable expecta
tions these, but never accomplished ! No history
records that the exiles of the northern kingdom,
" Ephraim," ever did return, as a body, to repossess
their ancient seats,|| or that even any thing like the
principal part of the people of the southern kingdom
so returned. And, on the other hand, history does re
cord, with peremptory distinctness, in its details of the
* Jer. xxx. 1-4. f xxx- 5~7 '< u " 15- J xxx. 16, 23, 24.
§ xxx. 8-10; 17-22; xxxi. 1-14; 21-40. — "Upon this I awoke
and beheld ; and my sleep was sweet to me " (26) ; I presume the text
here to be corrupt ; I suppose no intelligible rendering can be given of the
words as they stand ; they appear to be represented as words of Jehovah.
|| xxx. 3; xxxi. 5, 6, 9, 15-20, 27, 31. — "A voice hath been
heard in Ramah,  Rachel, weeping for her children," &c. (15);
Ramah (a height) was a name given to different places, among others to a
city in the tribe of Ephraim (1 Sam. i. 1), of which tribe Rachel was the
ancestor (Gen. xlvi. 19, 20).

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. 363
transactions of the invasion by Titus, a contradiction
to Jeremiah's augury that the rebuilt city should no
more " be plucked up, or thrown down, for ever " ; *
and it fully informs us that the prophet spoke without
knowledge, if he really meant to say, without a figure,
that the rescued people should " be subject to stran
gers no more."t With short intervals, what else has
been their condition from Jeremiah's time to the pres
ent 1
The beginning of the thirty-second chapter relates,
that, in the last year but one of Zedekiah's reign,
while the Babylonish forces were besieging Jerusalem,
and Jeremiah was in prison for predicting that the
city would be taken and the king carried into exile as
his predecessor had been, the prophet, to show his
confident expectation that the country, though over
run by foreign invaders, would ultimately be repos
sessed by its rightful Jewish owners, bought a piece of
land of a kinsman, and, in the presence of numerous
witnesses,-delivered the title-deeds to Baruch, with an
injunction so to keep them that they might " endure
a great length of 'time " ; " for," said he, " thus saith
Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel : ' Yet again shall
houses and fields and vineyards be bought in this
land.' " X It next describes how, having finished this
transaction, a feeling of distrust came over him, and
he offered a prayer, acknowledging the justice of the
retribution about to fall upon the rebellious nation,
and asking how Jehovah could have permitted him to
buy land which a triumphant foreign enemy was about
to occupy and appropriate^ But presently he found

* Jer. xxxi. 40 ; comp. Matt. xxiv. 2.
f xxx. 8.
X xxxii. 1-15. For remarks on verses 6-9, see below, pp. 386, 387.
§ xxxii. 16-25.

364 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
himself reassured. His confidence in Jehovah's ulti
mate purpose of mercy returned. It was borne in upon
his mind that, though Jehovah was about to smite in
righteous vengeance, he would in longrsuffering com
passion restore. The thing was hard, but the hardest
thing of all was for any complication of human agen
cies to resist Jehovah's will ; and that will he was per
suaded was to recall the people in good time from all
the places of their exile, and restore to them their an
cient dwellings in permanent possession, so that they
should again "buy fields for money, and subscribe
deeds, and seal them, and take witnesses, in the land of
Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in
the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the hill-coun
try, and in the cities of the valley, and in the cities of
the south." *
A second time, while he was in prison during the
siege, the same train of thought took possession of the
prophet's mind, and was expressed by him in the poem
preserved in the thirty-third chapter. It is expressed
the second time with little variety of topics, and with
considerable similarity of language. The main differ
ences are, that the latter poem contains promises of
restoration from captivity, and the consequent bless
ings, for the Israelitish kingdom as well as the Jew-
ish,"]" and that it declares that there shall be a perma
nent reestablishment of the monarchy in the line of
David, and of the Levitical priesthood and ritual.J
The first passage of the next chapter recites a Avarn-

* Jer. xxxii. 26-44. The passage in xxxii. 2-25 is parenthetical,
breaking the connection between verses 1 and 26, to interpose between them
matter illustrative of the last part of the chapter.
¦)• Comp. xxxiii. 7, 14, 24.
% xxxiii. 15-22. — With the form of asseveration in xxxiii. 20, 21, 25,
26, comp. xxxi. 35-37.

XLIX.] JEREMIAH XXV. l.-XXXV. 19. 365
ing addressed by the prophet to Zedekiah, at the time
when Nebuchadnezzar was pouring his armies over Ju
dea. Jeremiah told the king, that opposition to the
Chaldeans, or escape from them, was hopeless; that
the city would be taken and burned ; that he himself
would be brought before Nebuchadnezzar, and sent
to Babylon, though by the conqueror's clemency he
would be permitted to die in peace, and be buried with
mourning pomp like what had honored the interment
of his ancestors.* The conversation , appears to have
been the same as that related in a previous chapter
to have been the occasion of Jeremiah's imprisonment
in the year before the capture of Jerusalem."]"
The remainder of the chapter contains the record
of another of Jeremiah's threats of the approaching
fate of the city, — a catastrophe represented in this
instance as the consequence of a particular act of per
fidy on the part of Jews of the existing generation,
which act is explained in a few verses of introduction
to Jeremiah's discourse. It seems that " Zedekiah
had made a covenant with all the people that were
at Jerusalem " to emancipate all their Jewish servants,
and that the covenant had afterwards been violated,
and the freedmen again reduced to servitude. $ Where
upon Jeremiah told the transgressors that, as they, like
their fathers, had refused to hearken to Jehovah, " in
proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every
one to his neighbour," § therefore for them Jehovah
would " proclaim a liberty to the sword, to pestilence,
and to famine," and " give them into the hand of their
enemies," and cast out their dead bodies to " be food
for the birds of the heavens, and for the beasts of the

* Jer. xxxiv. 1-7. f Comp. xxxii. 1-5. J xxxiv. 8-11.
§ xxxiv. 12- 16. — With verses 13, 14, comp. Ex. xxi. 2, Deut. xv. 12.
31*

366 JEREMIAH XXV. 1. — XXXV. 19. [LECT.
earth," and enslave their king and his princes, and
yield their city to the flames, and their country to a
universal devastation.*
The transaction next related is of several years'
earlier date. " In the days of Jehoiakim, the son of
Josiah, king of Judah," Jeremiah found himself, as we
should say, providentially disposed to invite to a festive
entertainment, in an apartment within the precincts of
the temple, a family of strangers, " the house of the Ke-
chabites," who had sought a refuge at Jerusalem in the
alarm of the Chaldean invasion. To his surprise they
refused to drink wine, alleging as the reason of their
abstinence an injunction of "Jonadab, the son of Be-
chab," their ancestor, Avho had also directed them to
build no houses, nor sow, nor plant, but to lead a no
madic life, — which commands they had scrupulously
observed."]" The incident gave occasion to Jeremiah to
hold up to his countrymen the example of these hea
then as one of rebuke to themselves. They had not
hearkened to the instructions of Jehovah as the Ee-
chabites had yielded obedience to the words of Jonadab.
Therefore his sentence for them was, " Behold, I will
bring upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, all the evil which I have pronounced
against them " ; while for the docile strangers he had
the promise, " There shall not fail in the line of Jo
nadab, the son of Bechab, men to stand before me
for ever."J
* Jer. xxxiv. 17-22. — " They cut the calf in twain," &c. (18) ; comp.
Gen. xv. 9 et seq., Vol. II. p. 71, note f.
f xxxv. 1- 11.
X xxxv. 12-19. The Rechabites are called Kenites in 1 Chron. ii. 55;
comp. Judges i. 16; iv. 11; Ex. xviii. 9 et seq.; Numb. x. 29 et seq.;
2 Kings x. 15 et seq.

L] JEREMIAH XXXVI. l.-LII. 34. 367

LECTUKE L.
RESIDUE OF JEREMIAH'S PROPHECIES, AND
LAMENTATIONS.
Historical Miscellany, extending through Ten Chapters. — Trans
actions relating to a Collection or Jeremiah's Writings. — Two
Accounts of his Imprisonment and Discharge. — His Treatment by
Nebuchadnezzar's Officers. — Transactions among the People
left in Judea, terminating in their Retirement into Egypt. —
Jeremiah's Forebodings of Evil to his Countrymen and the Egyp
tians. — Idolatries of the Jews in Egypt. — Conference between
the Prophet and Baruch. — Rebukes and Threats addressed to
the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites
the Edomites, the Persians, the Syrians, " The Kingdoms of
Hazor," and the Chaldees. — Promises of Future Restoration
to Israel, Judah, Egypt, Moab, Ammon, and Persia. — The Last
Chapter a Copy of the Concluding Passage of the Second Book
of Kings. — Number of Captives carried to Babylon, only Four
or Five Thousand. — Alleged Predictions of the Messiah. — Di
vision of Passages supposed to contain other Predictions into
Four Classes. — 1. Those referring to a Past Event.. — 2. Those
referring to a future event, capable of being anticipated by
Natural Foresight. — 3, Those apparently referring to the Fu
ture, BUT NOT KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN EVER FULFILLED.  4. THOSE
which, if interpreted as llteral declarations concerning the
Future, were contradicted by the Subsequent Event. — Book
of Lamentations, consisting of Five Elegiac Poems, the First
Four being in the Acrostic Form. — Their Subject, the Devas
tation of Judea by the Chaldees. — Quotations from Jeremiah
in the New Testament.
The portion of the Book of Jeremiah hitherto ex
amined, we have found to consist of a collection of
poems, with here and there some sentences of prose
in the way of explanation and connection. The same
is the character of the smaller part of the residue of

368 JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. [LECT.
the book. Tavo passages are of a different descrip
tion ; namely, the collection of disconnected narratives,
extending through ten chapters from the beginning of
the thirty-sixth (interspersed with which are, however,
some poetical compositions), and the account of the
destruction of Jerusalem in the fifty-second chapter,
which closes the book.
The historical miscellany beginning with the thirty-
sixth chapter consists of eight distinct narratives, ar
ranged without regard to chronological order, either
with reference to one another, or to the previous or
succeeding parts of the book.
The first relates to a collection made by the prophet,
with the assistance of " Baruch, the son of Neriah," of
his writings previous to the fourth year of Jehoiakim ; *
to its being read in the presence first of the people,
by Baruch, in the hope of moving them to peni-
tence,"]" then of " all the princes," and lastly of the
king ; J to its destruction by the king's command,
whose rage Jeremiah and Baruch only escaped by con
cealing themselves ; § and to its restoration, with ad
ditions, by Jeremiah and his scribe.|| It may be
thought to follow from this history, that the copy in
our hands of any earlier compositions of Jeremiah was
not committed to writing before the fifth year of the
successor of that king in whose reign the earliest of
them are said to have been produced.^]"
The second narrative, overleaping the space between
the fifth year of Jehoiakim and the reign of Zedekiah,
relates the arrest and imprisonment of Jeremiah on a
charge of treachery, and because of his obstinacy in

* Jer. xxxvi. 1-4. f xxxvi. 5-10.
J xxxvi. 11-21. § xxxvi. 22-26.
|| xxxvi. 27-32. For remarks on verse 30, see below, p. 392.
% Comp. i. 2 ; xxxvi. 9, 28.

L] JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. 369
asserting that Jerusalem was in danger from the Chal
deans, even though the Chaldean army, on the rumor
of an advance of the Egyptians, had broken up its
camp before that city, and raised the siege* After
a long confinement in a dungeon, Jeremiah is said to
have told the king, in a private intervieAv, that the Bab
ylonians would take him prisoner, and remonstrating
with him for the unjust severity of the treatment
which he had suffered, and pointing out the folly of
the confidence which had been placed in false proph
ets, to have solicited a mitigation of the rigor of his
imprisonment. " Then Zedekiak, the king, commanded
that they should commit Jeremiah into the court of
the prison, and that they should give him daily a piece
of bread out of the bakers' street, until all the bread
in the city should be consumed. And Jeremiah re
mained in the court of the prison." X
The third narrative gives an account of Jeremiah's
imprisonment, differing from the former in some im
portant particulars. According to this, he was im
prisoned on the charge of Shephatiah and others, and
not on that of Irijah ; he was confined in the dungeon
of Malchiah, and not in that of Jonathan ; J it was
by the interposition of Ebedmelech, who is not men
tioned in the other account, that Jeremiah obtained
an audience of the king, having been dragged up for
that purpose by cords, from the vault where he was
confined ; § and various new particulars are given of
the conference with Zedekiah, of which the principal
is, that the prophet told him that it was yet in his pow
er, by timely submission to the Babylonians, to save
* Jer. xxxvii. 1 - 15. — " Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah " (3) ; comp.
p. 361, note J.
f xxxvii. 16-21. X xxxviii. 1-6; comp. xxxvii. 1-15.
§ xxxviii. 7-13.

370 JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. [LECT.
himself and the city.* The last verses of the chap
ter record a deception on Jeremiah's part, which it
seems unlikely that he would have himself wished to
bequeathe to the knowledge of later times.f
We next read of the proceedings of Nebuchadnez
zar with Zedekiah and Jeremiah respectively, on the
occasion of the capture and sack of Jerusalem. It is
related, that, when the Babylonians had pushed the
siege so far as to be about to take possession of the
city, Zedekiah attempted to escape by night, but,
being pursued and taken, was brought before Nebu
chadnezzar at Riblah, who, having caused his sons
" and all the nobles of Judah " to be put to death be
fore his eyes, had him deprived of sight, and conveyed
in that condition to Babylon. "And the Chaldeans
burned the king's house, and the houses of the people,
with fire, and they broke down the walls of Jerusalem.
And the residue of the people, that remained in the
city, and the deserters who had come over to him, the
residue of the people that remained, Nebuzaradan,
the captain of the guard, carried away to Babylon.
But the poor of the people, who had nothing, Nebu
zaradan, captain of the guard, left in the land of Ju
dah, and gave them vineyards and fields." X
By the command of Nebuchadnezzar to his general,
Jeremiah was released from prison and conducted
to his home with the distinguished attendance of the
newly appointed viceroy, — his friend Ebedmelech,
to whom he had been indebted for release from
Malchiah's dungeon, having, it seems, shared in his
exemption from the troubles of the time, agreeably
* Jer. xxxviii. 14-23. — With chaps, xxxvii. and xxxviii., comp. xxi.
1 - 10. The three have such points of resemblance as strongly to suggest
the idea of a common origin.
f xxxviii. 24-28 ; comp. xxxvii. 20, 21. J xxxix. 1-10.

L] JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. 371
to hopes which, in his gratitude for that service, the
prophet had conceived, and perhaps expressed* In
a repetition of the statement of his release by the
Chaldee officers, the circumstances of that transaction
are dwelt upon with more particularity. With the
rest of his countrymen, he had been conducted in
chains as far as Ramah, on the way to the land of
exile. There " Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard,"
having urged the propriety of regarding the calamity
which had fallen upon the nation as the fit punish
ment of their disobedience to their God, gave the
prophet the option of accompanying him to Babylon,
and living there under his protection, of returning to
Gedaliah, " made governor over the cities of Judah,"
or of establishing himself elsewhere. Jeremiah having
elected to go to Mizpah, and dwell there under Geda
liah' s government, " the captain of the guard gave
him provisions, and a present, and dismissed him." X
The remainder of this historical portion X relates
the surrender of the scattered Jewish forces to the
Babylonish governor ; the return of fugitives from the
neighbouring regions, and their reestablishment in in
dustrious pursuits under his assurance of protection ; §
the generous incredulity with which he listened to in
formation of a plot of the king of the Ammonites
against his life ; his assassination, and that of a number
of his adherents, with other acts of treacherous vio
lence, by Ishmael, a Jew of the royal family, whom he
had refused to allow to be put to death, when apprised
* Jer. xxxviii. 11-13. — Possibly we are to understand that that interest
with the Chaldeans which caused him to be treated by them with such
marked attention, and which had before made him an object of suspicion
with his countrymen (comp. xxxvii. 13-15), had enabled him to repay
Ebedmelech's kindness by providing for his safety.
f xl. 1 - 6. X witn xli- - xliii- 7 c°mp. 2 Kings xxv. 22-26.
$ xl. 7 - 12.

372 JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. [LECT.
that it was necessary for his own security ; * the at
tempted retreat of Ishmael into the country of the Am
monites with his Jewish and Babylonish captives, some
of the latter being Nebuchadnezzar's own daughters;!
the rout and dispersion of his force by Johanan, anoth
er of the late Jewish commanders, and the person who
had warned Gedaliah against him; X the alarm of Jo
hanan and his followers, lest the Babylonians should
return to take an undiscriminating vengeance for the
crime of Ishmael; and their consequent resolution
to retreat into Egypt.§ Against this measure the
prophet, being consulted respecting it, and having
taken time for consideration and prayer, earnestly re
monstrated, promising his countrymen the favor of Je
hovah and abundant prosperity, if they would only
remain in their own land, and threatening them with
speedy and total extirpation by sword, famine, and
pestilence, so that " not one of them " should sur
vive, if they persisted in their purpose.
His opposition proved unavailing. " Baruch, the
son of Neriah," was thought to have dictated it for
treacherous purposes of his own. And " Johanan, the
son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, took
all the remnant of Judah, who were returned from all
the nations, whither they had been driven, to dwell in
the land of Judah ; the men, and the women, and the
children, and the king's daughters, and every person
whom Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, had left
with Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the son of Sha-
phan, and Jeremiah* the prophet, and Baruch, the son
of Neriah ; and they went into the land of Egypt ; for
» Jer. xl. 13. -xii. 9.— " The pit  is the same which King
Asa made," &c. (9) ; comp. 1 Kings xv. 22.
t xii. 10. X xli- 11 - 15 ; with xii. 13 comp. xl. 8.
§ xii. 16-18.

L.] JEREMIAH XXXVI. l._ LII. 34. 373
they obeyed not the voice of Jehovah ; and they came
to Tahpanhes." *
HoAvever umvillingly, Jeremiah accompanied his
countrymen into Egypt, where, after their arrival, he
repeated his forebodings of evil, and extended his mal
edictions to their newly adopted country. Respecting
the latter he told them that Nebuchadnezzar would
subjugate and lay it waste, putting to death, or carrying
away captive, its inhabitants, burning its temples, and
breaking in pieces, or bearing off' in triumph, the im
ages of its gods."]; As to themselves, he seA'erely re
proved the idolatries into which they were presently
seduced in their new dwelling, pointing them to the
desolation which, in retribution for that sin, had fallen
on their native country,^ and threatening that the
same vengeance, by sword, famine, and pestilence,
should overtake the emigrants into Egypt, so that
none should " escape or remain of the remnant of
Judah," but all " be consumed, from the least to the
greatest."§ His solemn appeal was unheeded. Men
and women both, " a great multitude, even all the
people that dwelt in the land of Egypt and in Pa-
thros," declared their purpose still " to burn incense to
the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings
to her," as they and their ancestors had done in Ju-
* Jer. xiii. 1.- xliii. 7. — "They came to Tahpanhes" (7) ;. a city
near Pelusium, by the mouth of the Nile, called by Herodotus Daphne.
Lib. II. § § 30, 107. Comp. Jer. ii. 16.
f xliii. 8-13. — "Bethshemesh" (13); understood to be the Egyptian
city On, near Memphis, where was a temple of the sun. The Hebrew
words Beth-Shemesh mean House of the Sun. The Greeks called On
Heliopolis, i. e. City of the Sun. Comp. Herod., Lib. II. § 59.
X xliv. 1-10. — "At Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Noph, and in the
land of Pathros" (1) ; Migdol (comp. Ex. xiv. 2) was probably the Magdo-
lus of the Greeks, near Pelusium ; by Noph (comp. Isaiah xix. 13, Jer.
ii. 16) the ancient commentators understood Memphis, and by Pathros, the
district of the Thebais.
§ xliv. 11-14.
VOL. III. 32

374 JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1.— LII. 34. [LECT.
dea, in the prosperous times which were now depart-
ed .* Jeremiah could but repeat his warning, and say
that, careless and incredulous as his countrymen were,
they would have to give it credit when they should
see the king of Egypt, like the king of Israel before,
given "into the hand of his enemies, and into the
hand of them that seek his life.""]"
This portion of the book closes with an account of
a short conference between Jeremiah and Baruch. In
reply to an expression of discontent on the part of the
latter, " after he had written these words in a book
from the mouth of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Je
hoiakim, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah," J the
prophet, only reminding him that it was unreasonable
to seek great things in the way of personal advantage,
when even Jehovah had been disappointed in his sov
ereign purposes, bade him find encouragement in the
hope of Divine protection and guidance for himself,
when evil should presently be brought " upon all
flesh." § Perhaps we are to understand Jeremiah's
purpose to have been, to arouse Baruch's courage to
the task of reading his prophecies to the people. ||
Nothing can be more rude and unsatisfactory than
this series of historical notices, in the condition in
which they have descended to us. It seems entirely
safe to say, that the original materials of the book
must have suffered great violence between their com
ing from the hands of Jeremiah, if from his hands
they all originally proceeded, and their collection in
the form in which we find them.
In the six chapters beginning with the forty-sixth,
Jeremiah addresses himself to the idolatrous surround-

* Jer. xliv. 15-19. f xliv. 20-30. % Comp. xxxvi. 1-4.
§ xiv. 1-5. || Comp. xxxvi. 6.

L] JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. 375
ing nations ; but even with this change of application,
his range of topics is very little extended. Still, as to
the Jews, so to Egypt, to Philistia, to the Moabites, to
the Ammonites, to the Edomites, to the Elamites, to
Syria, to " the kingdoms of Hazor " (Avhatever king
doms they were), and finally to conquering Babylon
itself, destruction and desolation at the hands of fero
cious enemies are the great theme of his address.
The passages relating to Egypt are two. The for
mer,* at least, was probably written after the event to
which it relates. Its subject is said in the introduc
tory note to be " the army of Pharaoh-Necho, the king
of Egypt, which was by the River Euphrates in Car-
chemish, which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
smote, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Jo
siah." Now we do not know how long Jeremiah lived,
but the fourth year of Jehoiakim preceded by some
eighteen years the capture of Jerusalem, Avhich latter
event Jeremiah survived for some time. Of the other
passage relating to Egypt, f and of those which follow,
relating to the invasion and qonquest of other coun
tries by the Babylonians,^ no more is to be said than
that we have no means of determining whether they
were written after or before any of the occurrences
which in vague poetical language they portray. Nebu
chadnezzar's first inroad into Palestine after his great
victory over the Egyptians took place about eighteen
years before the destruction of the Jewish capital,§ and

* Jer. xlvi. 1-12. f xlvi. 13-28; comp. Is. xix.
X Philistia, xlvii. (comp. Is. xxiii. ; the writer of the note in Jer. xlvii.
appears to have understood Jeremiah as referring to a conquest of the Phi
listine country by Egypt ; erroneously, however ; the prophet intends Chal
dea ; he says (2) , " waters rise up out of the North) ; Moab, xlviii. (comp. Is.
xv., xvi.; Numb. xxi. 26-30) ; Ammon, xlix. 1-6 ; Edom, 7-22 (comp.
Obadiah 1-9); Syria, 23-27 (comp. Is. xvii. 1-5); Kedar (in Arabia)
and " the kingdoms of Hazor," 28 - 33 ; Persia, 34 - 39.
§ 2 Kings xxiii. 29 ; xxiv. 1.

376 JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. [LECT.
we have no accurate knowledge as to how far and how
fast he extended his conquests through most of the
neighbouring regions, nor do we know that his whole
career of conquest did not terminate within the life
time of Jeremiah. But no such supposition is neces
sary to account for the prophet's language. It is all
language such as would naturally be used by any ju
dicious observer in view of the sudden and striking
development of the genius and ambition of that able
prince, and the resources of his newly established
kingdom. Such a person might very confidently
threaten and foretell that the neighbouring powers
would have to yield by turns to the superior strength
of the young victor Avho at Carchemish had so sig
nally repulsed the Egyptian invader, and with such
vigor rolled back the tide of war on his retreating
hosts. Certainly it was altogether natural that the
expectation of all this should be confidently expressed
by one whose wish was " father to the thought"; who,
in the whole tone of his writings, expresses the sense
that Babylon was irresistible; and who, by his con
stant dissuasives from opposition to that power, had
even given rise to the suspicion, that he was treacher
ously in its interest.
As in repeated instances before, the prophet speaks
of an ultimate restoration of Israel and Judah after
their downfall.* But this is no more than is also
foretold for the other nations wasted by the Babylo
nian arms ; for Egypt,f for Moab,f for Ammon,§ and
for Persia. ]|
And as other nations may hope for a renovation af
ter their overthrow by Babylon, so Babylon must an
ticipate a day of doom and desolation for herself after
* Jer. xlvi. 27, 28; 1. 4 et seq., 19, 20, 33, 34. f xlvi- 26-
X xlviii. 47. § xlix. 6. || xlix. 39.

L-] JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. 377
her triumphs over those devoted nations .* The proud
conqueror must in her turn be conquered. This is
the theme of the last two poetical chapters, and the
natural close to these threatenings of woe against the
God-abandoned nations. The topics of the denuncia
tion against Babylon are for the most part similar to
what have been constantly employed before in respect
to the fate of other kingdoms. They are indeed but
the commonplaces naturally belonging to the subject
of national disaster, when that idea is enlarged upon
Avith the kind of emphasis which poetry requires.
One point alone excites particular notice. By Jere
miah, as well as by Isaiah,f whom he often imitates,
Babylon is threatened with an' overthrow by the arms
of the Medes.
" Make sharp the arrows ; seize the shields !
Jehovah hath roused up the spirit of the kings of the Medes ;
For his purpose is against Babylon, to destroy it." — li. 11. J
" Set ye up a standard in the land,
Sound a trumpet among the nations ;
Enlist the nations against Babylon,
Call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz ;
Appoint captains against her,
Cause the horses to come up like the bristled locusts !
Enlist ye against her the nations,
The kings of the Medes, and their prefects,
And all their governors,
And all the lands under their dominion,
So that the earth shall tremble and quake !
For the purpose of Jehovah against Babylon is to be fulfilled,
To make the land of Babylon a desolation, without an inhabitant." — li. 27-29.
Now, considering that, at the time supposed to be

* With Jer. 1. 39-46 comp. Is. xiii. 19-22 ; xxxiv. 14 ; Jer. vi. 22-
24; xlix. 18-21.
f See above, pp. 200-204, 211-213.
X With the passage li. 15 - 19 comp. x. 12- 16, of which it is a repe
tition; also comp. Ps. cxxxv. 7.
32*

378 JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. [LECT.
here referred to, Babylon was taken by the combined
forces of Media and Persia, under the command of
a Persian prince, yet that Persia, or Elam, is not so
much as referred to, though its conquest and utter
devastation had been the subject of the chapter imme
diately preceding, — while, on the other hand, the
provinces of Armenia are referred to with distinctness,
as belonging to the hostile alliance,* — this language
seems hardly precise enough to be relied on as super
natural prediction. Perhaps we are to find in the
mention of Media as the instrument of Divine ven
geance against Babylon, only a repetition of Isaiah's
thought, which had acquired a peculiar interest for
both writer and reader from the celebrity of his char
acter and the charm of his poetry. Independently of
this, we may account for the language as an extension
of that parallelism, the most general statement of
which has been already referred to."]" As Babylon had
been the conqueror, so in her turn she must be the
victim.^ " From the north " Babylon had rushed up
on Judea.§ From the north, too, in strict retribution,
let her expect her own ruin.||
" The heavens shall shout over Babylon,
And the earth and all that is therein ;
For out of the North come spoilers against her, saith Jehovah.
As Babylon caused the slain of Israel to fall,
So at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the land." — li. 48, 49.
But if from the North, then from Media, whose terri
tory lay along her northern border.
A further propriety in this reference to Media in

* Jer. li. 27. f See above, p. 349.
X " As she hath done, do ye to her " (1. 15) ; comp. 29.
§ i. 13, 14, 15 ; iii. 12, 18 ; iv. 6 ; vi. 1, 22 ; x. 22 ; xxiii. 8 ; xxv. 9, 26 ;
xxxi. 8 ; xlvi. 6, 10, 20, 24 ; xlvii. 2.
|| Comp. 1. 3, 9,41 ; with 40, comp. xlix. 18.

L] JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. 379
the way of poetical emphasis appears when we remem
ber that, two or three hundred years before Jeremiah's
time, the first Assyrian empire had been overthrown
by a conspiracy of the governors of Media and Baby
lon, and in its dismemberment these two kingdoms
had had their origin .* To say, then, to Babylon that
she would be overrun by the Medes, was to say that
she was to meet the same fate at their hands which in
alliance with them she had herself inflicted on Nine
veh. Long before Jeremiah's time, Media was a great
power."]* It was steadily growing during the period
of the exhausting western expeditions of Nebuchad
nezzar ; and as a matter of reasonable anticipation
nothing was more likely, when Jeremiah wrote, than
that before long, when the genius of that monarch
should no more protect his realms, they should fall
under the Median sway .J
It would appear that, at some period of the various
changes through which the book has passed, it was
brought to a close at the end of the fifty-first chapter;
for in the last verse of that chapter, after a brief ac
count of a charge given by Jeremiah to an officer of
Zedekiah to take with him to Babylon, and there
solemnly proclaim, the threats which the prophet had
uttered against that power, we read, " Thus far the
words of Jeremiah." § In the collection, however, as
* See above, pp. 71, 72, 141. f See above, pp. 72, 151.
X I raise no doubt respecting the authenticity of the word '"in Medes,
(li. 11, 28,) out of which this whole question arises. It is found in all the
versions. Every reader sees how easily, from being a gloss in the first
instance, it might have crept into the text, both of Isaiah and of Jeremiah.
But I think that any one who had wished to insert a comment by way of
explanation, after the event, would have framed it so as to accord with the
event more precisely.
§ Jer. li. 59-64. — " He went with Zedekiah, the king of Judah, into Bab
ylon, in the fourth year of his reign" (59) ; if this journey of Zedekiah was
really made, it was a very noticeable fact ; but the history is silent respect-

380 JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. [LECT.
it now exists in our hands, another chapter is sub
joined, containing a repetition of a portion of the his
tory related in a previous chapter.* It is simply a
copy of the concluding passage of the Second Book of
Kings, with three variations. The description of part
of the furniture and embellishments of the temple,
carried away by the conquerors, is a little more full
than in the historical book."]" The compendious ac
count of the administration of Gedaliah and the migra
tion into Egypt J is omitted. And the following
remarkable passage is added, viz. : —
" This is the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried
away captive ; in the seventh year, three thousand and
twenty-three Jews ; in the eighteenth year of Nebu
chadnezzar, he carried away captive from Jerusalem
eight hundred and thirty-two persons; in the three
and twentieth year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan,
captain of the guards, carried away captive of the Jews
seven hundred forty and five persons. All the persons
were four thousand and six hundred." §
According to which statement, all the emphatic pre
dictions by Jeremiah of the utter extirpation of a nu
merous people by their Babylonian conquerors resulted
in this ; that as the spoil of three successive invasions,.
taking place several years apart, there were conducted
away by the victors a number of prisoners amounting
in the whole to between four and five thousand.
Of predictions by Jeremiah respecting the mission
and agency of the Saviour, the folloAving are alleged
ing it. — " Thus far the words of Jeremiah " (64) ; these words are want
ing in the Septuagint, where the (Hebrew) fifty-first chapter is disposed
as the twenty-eighth.
* Comp. Jer. xxxix.
f Comp. Jer. Iii. 21-23 with 2 Kings xxv. 17.
j 2 Kings xxv. 22 - 26. § Jer. Iii. 28 - 30.

L-] JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. 381
as the chief examples* Without remark, I leave it to
the intelligent reader to judge what indication they
afford of the possession by that writer of supernatural
foreknowledge concerning Jesus of Nazareth.
" Return, ye rebellious children ! saith Jehovah ;
Though I have rejected you,
Yet will I receive you again,
One from a city, and two from a nation,
And I will bring you to Zion.
And I will give you shepherds after my own heart,
Who shall feed you with wisdom and discretion.
And when ye shall have multiplied and increased in the land, saith
Jehovah,
Then shall ye no more speak of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah,
Nor shall it come into your mind.
None shall remember it ;
None shall care for it ;
It shall not be made any more.
For then shall Jerusalem be called the throne of Jehovah,
And all the nations shall resort to it ;
They shall resort to Jehovah, to Jerusalem,
And shall no more walk after the perverseness of their evil hearts.
In those days shall the house of Judah unite themselves with the house
of Israel,
And they shall come together from the north country,
To the land which I caused your fathers to inherit." — iii. 14- 18.
" I will gather the remnant of my flock
From all the countries whither I have driven them,
And will bring them back to their folds,
And they shall be fruitful and increase.
And I will raise up shepherds over them, who shall feed them ;
They shall fear no more, nor be dismayed ;
Nor shall they be lost, saith Jehovah.
" Behold, the days are coming, saith Jehovah,
When I will raise up from David a righteous branch,
And a king shall reign and prosper,
And shall maintain justice and equity in the land.
In his days Judah shall be saved,
And Israel shall dwell securely ;
And this is the name which shall be given him,
Jehovah-is-our-salvation .
Therefore, behold, the days shall come, saith Jehovah,
* See Hengstenberg's " Christologie des A. T.," Th. I. a. 210.

382 JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. [LECT.
When they shall no more say, ' As Jehovah liveth,
Who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt ! '
But, ' As Jehovah liveth,
Who brought up and led the race of Israel from the north country,
And from all the countries whither I had driven them ! '
And they shall dwell in their own land." — xxiii. 3-8.
" Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah,
That I will make with the house of Israel,
And with the house of Judah, a new covenant ;
Not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers,
In the day when I took them by the hand,
To bring them out of the land of Egypt ;
Which covenant of mine they broke,
And I rejected them, saith Jehovah.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel ;
After those days, saith Jehovah, I will put my law into their inward
parts,
And upon their hearts will I write it ;
And I will be their God,
And they shall be my people.
And they shall teach no more,
Every man his neighbour, and every man his brother,
Saying, ' Know ye Jehovah ! '
For they shall all know me,
From the least of them even to the greatest of them, saith Jehovah ;
For I will forgive their iniquity,
And I will remember their sin no more.
Thus saith Jehovah ;
Who made the sun for a light by day,
And the ordinances of the moon and stars for a light by night,
Who stirreth up the sea, so that the waves thereof roar,
Jehovah of hosts is his name ;
If these ordinances shall depart from before me,
Then shall the race of Israel also cease from being a nation before me
for ever." — xxxi. 31 - 36.
" 1 will bind up her wounds, and heal them,
And I will reveal to them abundance of peace and stability.
And I will bring back the captives of Judah,
And the captives of Israel,
And I will build them, as at the first.
And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity,
Whereby they have sinned against me ;
And I will forgive all their iniquities,
Whereby they have sinned,
And have rebelled against me.

L.] JEREMIAH XXXVI. 1. — LII. 34. 383
And it [the city] shall be to me a name of joy,
A praise and a glory among all nations of the earth,
Who shall hear of all the good which I do to them.
And they shall fear and tremble because of all the good,
And because of all the prosperity, which I bestow upon it."
— xxxiii. 6-9.
" Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah,
That I will perform that good thing
Which I have spoken concerning the house of Israel,
And concerning the house of Judah.
In those days and at that time
Will I cause to grow up from David a righteous branch,
Who shall maintain justice and equity in the land.
In those days shall Judah be saved,
And Jerusalem shall dwell securely ;
And this is the name which shall be given her, Jehovah-is-our-salvalion,.
For thus saith Jehovah ;
There shall never fail from David
A man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel ;
Neither from the priests and the Levites
Shall a man fail before me,
To offer burnt-offerings, and to kindle meat-offerings,
And to perform sacrifice continually.
" And the word of Jehovah came to Jeremiah and said :
Thus saith Jehovah :
If ye can break my covenant concerning the day,
And my covenant concerning the night,
So that there shall no more be day and night in their season,
Then also may my covenant with David my servant be broken,
So that he shall not have a son to reign upon his throne ;
And with the Levites, the priests, my servants.
As the host of heaven cannot be numbered,
Nor the sand of the sea measured,
So will I multiply the posterity of David my servant,
And the Levites who minister to me.
" The word of Jehovah came also to Jeremiah, saying :
Seest thou not what this people speaketh, saying,
' The two families which Jehovah chose he hath cast off' ?
Therefore they despise my people,
So that they are no more a people in their eyes.
Thus saith Jehovah :
If my covenant concerning the day and the night be not maintained,
And if I have not established the ordinances of the heaven and the earth,
Then will I cast away the posterity of Jacob, and of David, my
servant,
So as not to take of his posterity to be rulers
Over the posterity of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ;

384 JEREMIAH XXX Vf. l. — LII. 34. [LECT.
For I will bring them back from their captivity,
And have mercy upon them." — xxxiii. 14-26.*
Other passages in the book of Jeremiah, the most
likely to he urged as indicating supernatural fore
knowledge, I am disposed to class under four heads as
follows, viz. : —
I. Passages which are to be interpreted as referring
to a past event, and not to a future ; for instance : —
" Weep not for him that is dead,
Make no lamentation for him !
Weep ye for him who has gone away ;
For he shall return no more,
No more see his native land !
For thus saith Jehovah
Concerning Shallum, the son of Josiah, king of Judah,
Who reigned instead of Josiah his father,
Who went forth from this place,
He shall return to it no more ;
But in the place whither they have led him captive shall he die,
And shall see this land no more." — xxii. 10 - 12.
"Therefore thus saith Jehovah,
Concerning Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah :
They shall not lament for him, saying,
' Alas, my brother ! ' or, ' Alas, sister ! '
They shall not lament for him, saying,
' Alas, lord ! ' or, ' Alas, his glory ! '
With the burial of an ass shall he be buried,
Dragged along and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem."
— xxii. 18, 19.
It seems necessary to understand these verses to
have been written after the time of Shallum and Je
hoiakim, because Jeconiah, who succeeded both, is
addressed as the reigning king in another part of the
same poem."]"
* What is not a little remarkable is the doubtful authenticity of this whole
passage, so much esteemed by Christian commentators for the purposes of
their mystical interpretation. There is no trace whatever of it in the Sep
tuagint version.
f Jer. xxii. 24 - 28. — Whether, however, the account given of Jehoi
akim's fate in xxii. 18, 19 be regarded as history or prophecy, it appears to

L] JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. 385
Again : —
" Hear ye, therefore, the word of Jehovah,
All ye of the captivity, whom I have sent from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel :
As to Ahab, the son of Kolaiah, and Zedekiah, the son of Maaseiah,
Who prophesy a lie to you in my name,
Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of
Babylon,
And he shall slay them before your eyes.
And from them shall be taken a curse
Among all the captives of Judah that are at Babylon,
So that they shall say,
' Jehovah make thee like Zedekiah and like Ahab,
Whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire ! '
Because they have practised villany in Israel,
And have committed adultery with their neighbours' wives,
And have spoken lying words in my name, which I commanded them not.
But I know it, and am a witness, saith Jehovah." — xxix. 20-23.
From the twentieth verse, as well as from the in
troductory part of the chapter, it appears that the de
liverance " into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of
Babylon," spoken of in the twenty-first verse, had al
ready taken place. Change the word saith, in the
twenty-first verse, into said, which is a more literal
translation, and then the writer appears to be refer
ring to the punishment which, under Divine Provi
dence, had overtaken Ahab and Zedekiah, and holding
it up as a warning to others.
II. Passages referring to a future event, such as —
for any thing, at least, that we can assume to the con
trary — it was within the power of instructed and
practised human sagacity to foreknow, or at least to
anticipate on strong grounds of probability suffi
cient to justify the premonition. Such are the two
following. " Jeremiah the prophet said also to Hananiah the
be contradicted elsewhere ; see 2 Kings xxiv. 6 ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6 ; Ezek.
xix. 9.
VOL. III. 33

386 JEREMIAH XXXVI. l.—LII. 34. [LECT.
prophet : Hear now, Hananiah ! Jehovah hath not
sent thee ; but thou makest this people to trust in a
lie. Therefore thus saith Jehovah : Behold, I will cast
thee off from the face of the earth. This year thou
shalt die ; for thou hast spoken rebellion against Jeho
vah. And Hananiah the prophet died in the same
year, in the seventh month." *
For aught that appears, Jeremiah knew Hananiah
to be affected Avith fatal sickness, and meant to remon
strate with him for being so thoughtless when so near
his end. According to the account, Hananiah died
within two months of being thus addressed by Jere-
miah.f But Jeremiah denounced nothing more pre
cise than that he would die within the year. The
text, however, is too uncertain to admit of any satis
factory reasoning on the interpretation. X
" Then said Jeremiah : The word of Jehovah came
to me, and said : Behold, Hanameel, the son of Shal
lum, thine uncle, will come to thee, and say, Buy thee
my field, which is in Anathoth, for thine is the re
demption-right to buy it. And so Hanameel, the son
of. my uncle, came to me in the court of the prison, ac
cording to the word of Jehovah, and said to me, Buy,
I pray thee, my field, which is in Anathoth, for thine
is the right of inheritance and redemption ; buy it for
thyself! "§
I understand this as if it were written, " It provi
dentially came to my knowledge that my kinsman was
intending to propose this purchase " ; or, " I had, a
* Jer. xxviii. 15- 17. f Comp. xxviii. 1, 17.
X See above, p. 359. — The Chaldee reading is, "Thou shalt die this
year, and be buried the next  And Ananias the false prophet died
that year, and was buried in the seventh month." For the variations of the
Septuagint, according to different manuscripts, &c, and Jerome's testimony
as to its reading in his age, see Spohn, " Jeremias Arates," &c, ad loc.
§ xxxii. 6-8.

L.] JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. 387
presentiment which, when subsequently confirmed by
the event, I acknowledged for providential." It is as
we should say respecting any suggestion which turned
out fortunately, " God put it into my mind." Having
this presentiment, Jeremiah had provided himself with
money to make the purchase, so as not to lose the op
portunity of promptly testifying to his belief that the
land was not to be permanently alienated from the
children of Israel. The interest of the transaction,
causing it to be so carefully recorded, consists in this,
— that it was an expression of Jeremiah's confidence
that, though Judea was now in the hands of foreign
enemies, landed property in it Avas still worth purchas
ing, for it was God's purpose ultimately to reinstate
his people. This confidence, accordingly, he goes
on to express at large, through the remainder of the
chapter. III. Passages relating to the future, which, as we
do not know of any subsequent event corresponding
with them, we have no right to adduce as instances of
prediction fulfilled, nor even to interpret as having
been intended by the writer for prediction, but are
more safe in regarding as conveying a threat, or an an
nunciation of judgments deserved by the party ad
dressed. These are very numerous, and often extend
to a great length, as we saw in the last Lecture. Let
a few brief ones suffice here for examples.
" Therefore thus saith Jehovah against the men of Anathoth,
Who seek thy life, and say,
' Prophesy not in the name of Jehovah,
Lest thou die by our hand ! '
Therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts :
Behold, I will punish them ;
Their young men shall die by the sword ;
Their sons and their daughters shall die by famine ;
There shall be none of them left ;
For I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth,
At the time of their punishment." — xi. 21 -23.

388 JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. [LECT.
History has not informed us of any fulfilment of
this menace.
" Thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thy house,
Shall go into captivity ; thou shalt go to Babylon,
And there shalt thou die, and there shalt thou be buried,
Thou and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied falsely." — xx. 6.
Pashur's actual fate is not known to later ages by
any record. And, after all, the prediction, or threat,
as we may choose to call it, in this verse, did not relate
particularly to him. He was told that he was to be in
volved in a ruin in which many would share. " There
shalt thou be buried, thou and all thy friends, to whom
thou hast prophesied falsely."
" As the bad figs, which are so bad
That they cannot be eaten, saith Jehovah,
So will I make Zedekiah, the king of Judah,
And his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem,
Those that are left in this land, and those that dwell in the land of Egypt ;
And I will give them up to vexation and affliction in all the kingdoms of
the earth ;
Yea, to be a reproach and a proverb,
A taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them.
And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence among them,
Till they be consumed from the land, which I gave to them and to their
fathers." — xxiv. 8-10.
Who will maintain that just the calamities detailed
in the tenth verse, and those too to the degree of extir
pation, befell the persons specified in the eighth verse 1
I have selected this as a short specimen of the numer
ous passages in these books in which the writer is but
repeating, in the way of application to his own times,
the language of the great lawgiver.* Moses had
threatened that the sins of the nation would draw
down suitable punishments. Jeremiah, rebuking his
own age, says that the sins spoken of by Moses have
* Comp. Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxviii.

L.] JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. 389
been committed, and that therefore the punishment
may be looked for.
" Because Shemaiah, the prophet, hath prophesied to you,
And I sent him not,
And he hath caused you to trust in a lie ;
Therefore thus saith Jehovah :
Behold, I will punish Shemaiah, the Nehelamite, and his offspring.
There shall descend from him not a man to dwell among this people,
And he shall not behold the good which I will do for my people, saith
Jehovah ;
For he hath spoken rebellion against Jehovah." — xxix. 31, 32.
Perhaps Shemaiah had become childless, and Jere
miah meant to be understood as declaring his known
misfortune to be a providential punishment for his
fault. But later ages know nothing of the domestic
circumstances of Shemaiah, Avhether corresponding or
not to Jeremiah's description.
IV. Passages relating to the future, which we know,
or for good cause believe, never to have been fulfilled,
according to their terms, by any subsequent event ; so
that it would be doing injustice to the writer to stake
his character for veracity on interpretations of ours,
demanding such a fulfilment. They were expressions
of his expectations, of his hopes or fears. If we
will insist that he meant to have them understood
as expressions of his knowledge of the future, then
we shall maintain that he uttered words falsified by
the event.
The poem in the thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-
second chapters, and the similar one in the thirty-third,
describing a happy union, in their ancient seats, of the
restored people of the northern and southern kingdoms,
are elaborate compositions of this kind. The folloAV-
ing are examples within a shorter compass.
" ' Is then this man Coniah a contemptible, broken vessel?
Is he a vessel which no one careth for?
33*

390 JEREMIAH XXXVI. l.—LII. 34. [LECT.
Wherefore are he and his offspring cast forth,
And thrown into a land which they know not 1 '
" 0 land, land, land, hear the word of Jehovah !
Thus saith Jehovah :
Write ye this man childless,
A man that shall not be prosperous through his life ;
For none of his offspring shall prosper,
So as to sit on the throne of David,
And reign hereafter in Judah." — xxii. 28 - 30.
According to our historical information, Jeconiah
was not childless, and so far from his offspring not
prospering, one of them, Zerubbabel, Avas the partial
restorer of the Jewish state, and another, Joseph, was
the guardian of the childhood and youth of the Sav
iour of men*
The following is a shorter strain of the same de
scription as that in the thirty-first and thirty-second
chapters. " Behold, the days are coming, saith Jehovah,
When I will raise up from David a righteous branch,
And a king shall reign and prosper,
And shall maintain justice and equity in the, land.
In his days Judah shall be saved,
And Israel shall dwell securely ;
And this is the name which shall be given him,
Jehovah-is-our-salvation. Therefore, behold, the days shall come, saith Jehovah,
When they shall no more say, ' As Jehovah liveth,
Who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt ! '
But, ' As Jehovah liveth,
Who brought up and led the race of Israel from the north country,
And from all the countries whither I had driven them ! '
And they shall dwell in their own land." — xxiii. 5 -8.f
Again : —
" Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel :
Go and speak to Zedekiah, the king of Judah,
And say to him, Thus saith Jehovah :
* See 1 Chron. iii. 17- 19 ; Hag. i. 1 ; Matt. i. 11 - 16.
f See also xxxiii. 14-26, quoted in another connection on p. 383, as is
this passage on p. 381.

!¦•] JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. 391
Behold, I will give, this city into the hand of the king of Babylon,
And he shall burn it with fire.
And thou shalt not escape out of his hand,
But shalt surely be taken, and delivered into his hand,
And thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon,
And he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon.
Yet hear the word of Jehovah, 0 Zedekiah, king of Judah !
Thus saith Jehovah concerning thee :
Thou shalt not die by the sword ;
In peace shalt thou die ;
And according to the burnings of thy fathers,
The former kings, who were before thee,
So shall they burn for thee ;
And they shall lament for thee, saying, ' Ah, lord ! '
For I have spoken the word, saith Jehovah." — -xxxiv. 2-5.
Such is the prediction. But the history is as fol
lows : —
" The army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and
overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all
his army was scattered from him. And they took the
king, and carried him up to the king of Babylon, to
Riblah, in the land of Hamath ; where he gave judg
ment upon him. And the king of Babylon slew the
sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. He slew also all the
princes of Judah, in Riblah. And he put out the eyes
of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains ; and the king
of Babylon carried him to Babylon, and put him in
prison till the day of his death." *
As to Nebuchadnezzar's intention to convey Zede
kiah to Babylon, which is all that Jeremiah appears to
have correctly anticipated, the thing was probable in
itself, and the prophet may also have learned it through
his relations to the invaders, f
Again : —
" To the house of the Rechabites Jeremiah said,
Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel :
* Jer. Iii. 8- 11 ; comp. xxxix. 5- 7 ; 2 Kings xxv. 4-7.
f Comp. Jer. xxxvii. 13.

392 JEREMIAH XXXVI. l. — LII. 34. [LECT.
Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab, your father,
And kept all his precepts, and done according to all which he commanded
you,
Therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel :
There shall not fail in the line of Jonadab, the son of Rechab,
Men to stand before me for ever." — xxxv. 18, 19.
There can be no doubt that, literally taken, this has
not proved true. Jonadab's descendants have not
stood before Jehovah, from that day to this, in any
sense we can put upon the words.
Again : —
" Thus saith Jehovah concerning Jehoiakim, king of Judah :
He shall have not one to sit upon the throne of David ;
And his dead body shall be cast out
In the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.
And I will punish him, and his race, and his servants, for their iniquity ;
And I will bring upon them,
And upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah,
All the evil which I have pronounced against them, and they have not
hearkened." — xxxvi. 30, 31.
But according to the historical record, Jehoiakim's
burial was like that of others of the kings, and he was
succeeded on " the throne of David " by his son.*
Once more : —
" Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel :
If ye set your faces to enter into Egypt, and go to sojourn there,
Then it shall come to pass,
That the sword, which ye feared, shall overtake you there in the land of
Egypt,
And the famine, of which ye were afraid, shall follow close after you into
Egypt,
And there shall ye die.
So shall it be with all the men
That set their faces to go into Egypt to sojourn there.
They shall die by the sword, and by famine, and by pestilence,
And not one of them shall remain, or escape from the evil which I bring
upon them." — xiii. 15-17.
The prophecies " against the Gentiles " in the six
* See 2 Kings xxiv. 6.

L-] LAMENTATIONS I. 1. — V. 22. 393
chapters last remarked upon of the principal book of
this writer, particularly that of which Babylon is the
subject, are more spirited than most of the poems in
the earlier part of the collection. But the most elab
orate compositions of Jeremiah are those contained in
the other book called his " Lamentations." * They are
five in number ; their strain is elegiac ; and their sub
ject, the miseries which had been brought upon the
Jews by the Babylonian conquestf
The first four exhibit in perfection that peculiar
structure of the Hebrew verse on which I formerly
remarked. J Each consists of twenty-two acrostic
stanzas, the first three having three lines in each stan
za^ while in the fourth the stanza is a couplet. In
the third chapter the structure is peculiarly artificial,
each line in the first triplet beginning with the first
letter in the alphabet (k), each line in the second
triplet with the second letter (2), and so on, while in
* In the Jewish catalogues (see Vol. I. p. 40), while the larger Book of
Jeremiah is placed in the collection of " Prophets," that of the " Lamenta
tions " is referred to the " Hagiographa." But in the few remarks to be
made upon the latter in this work, it seemed injudicious to separate them.
The wonder rather is, that they were not always included in the principal
collection, to which on every account they appear properly to belong.
f In the Septuagint version (i. I) we have the following, which is not
preserved in the Hebrew text : " And it came to pass, after Israel was car
ried captive, and Jerusalem was desolated, that Jeremiah sat weeping, and
lamented this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said." In 2 Chron. xxxv.
25, we read : " Jeremiah lamented for Josiah ; and all the singing men and
the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and
made them an ordinance in Israel ; and behold, they are written in the Lam
entations." Accordingly, some of the commentators, ancient and modern,
have insisted that this book relates to the death of Josiah. But whatever
other book may have contained threnodies on that monarch, certainly it was
not this. It speaks for itself ; and it no more treats that subject than the
fall of Troy. But nothing of this sort surprises one who has some knowl
edge how common sense has been violated by little men and by great men
in the interpretation of the Bible.
X See Vol. II. pp. 306, 307.
§ The verses i. 7 and ii. 19 have each a supernumerary line.

394 LAMENTATIONS I. 1. — V. 22. [LECT.
the first, second, and fourth chapters this succession
of the twenty-two letters only marks the beginning of
the first line of the successive stanzas. The fifth
chapter, like the preceding, has twenty-two stanzas,
corresponding with the number of the alphabet, but
in their composition no regard is had to the succession
of initial letters. The lines in the fifth chapter are
much shorter than those in the others.
Elegiac poems of this kind are no subject for analy
sis. The author's feelings are moved by the sight of
his devastated country, and the memory of its departed
greatness, and he pours them out in the copious, but
monotonous, language of grief. In the third chapter
some critics have understood him as deploring his in
dividual misfortunes. Lowth interprets the passage as
" supposed to be uttered by the chorus of Jews, repre
sented by their leader, after the manner of the Greek
tragedies." * I think a better construction is, to regard
the writer as uttering in the first seven stanzas the
complaints which would be natural to any Jew for his
share in the common calamities of the nation, and in
the remainder of the chapter rebuking and correcting
such complaints by considerations of Jehovah's long-
suffering in the past, and of the reasonableness of re
liance on him for the future.
There is nothing in the book which bears any thing
of the appearance of prediction, unless one should
choose so to regard the language of hope on the one
hand, and of menace on the other, at the end of the
fourth chapter.
" Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land
of Uz!
Yet to thee also shall the cup come ! thou shalt be drunken, and shalt ex-'
pose thy nakedness.
* " Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews," Lect. XXII.

L.] LAMENTATIONS I. 1. — V. 22. 395
" Thy punishment is at an end, 0 daughter of Zion ! no more will he
carry thee into captivity ;
But thine iniquity will he punish, 0 daughter of Edom! he will uncover
thy sins." — iv. 21, 22.
I have observed no quotation from the " Lamenta
tions " in the New Testament. Jeremiah's larger book
is rarely quoted by the New Testament writers.*
* With Jer. vii. 11 comp. Matt. xxi. 13, Mark xi. 17, Luke xix. 46 ;
with Jer. ix. 24 comp. 1 Cor. i. 31 ; with Jer. xxxi. 15 comp. Matt. ii. 17,
18; with Jer. xxxi. 31-34 comp. Heb. viii. 8-12, x. 16, 17.

396 EZEKIEL !.,!. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.

LECTURE LI.
EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27.
Personal Notices of the Prophet. — General Statement of Sub
jects TREATED IN HIS WRITINGS. — THEIR OBSCURITY. — HlS VlSION
by the River Chaboras, resulting in a Commission to rebuke the
People. — Renewal of the Commission, and Temporary Dispensa
tion from it. — Imagery significant of the Overthrow of the
Two Kingdoms. — Distribution of the People into Three Parts,
for Destruction in Three Different Ways. — Threats and Re
proaches in the Usual Form. — Visionary Transportation to the
Temple at Jerusalem, and Contemplation of the Abominations
there practised, and of the Retribution appointed for them. —
Repetition at Jerusalem of the Vision before seen in Chaldea.
— Rebukes of certain Distinguished Criminals. — Supposed Pre
diction of the Fate of Zedekiah. — Prognostications of Speedy
Divine Vengeance. — Invectives against False Teachers. — Vin
dication of both the Severity and the Lenity of Jehovah. —
Comparison of the Disloyal Nation to a Faithless Wife. — Il
lustrations of the Fortunes of the last two Kings under the
Figures of a Cedar of Lebanon and a Vine. — Statement of the
Doctrine of Individual Responsibleness. — Retrospects of Na
tional Delinquencies and Disasters. — Repetitions of Menaces,
with Particular Reference to the Chaldee Invasion. — Repe
tition of the Comparison of Israel and Judah to Unchaste
Wives. — Movement of the Babylonian Armies. — Death of Eze
kiel's Wife, and his Abstinence from Mourning therefor.
While in Palestine and in Egypt Jeremiah was
foreboding and bewailing the calamities of his infat
uated countrymen, Ezekiel was performing the same
office in Chaldea. Ezekiel was of sacerdotal lineage,
the son of one Buzi. The meaning of his name is
God will strengthen. He appears to have been one of
the eight or ten thousand captives who were trans
ported to Mesopotamia in the eighth year of the reign

W-] ezekiel i. i.-xxiv. 27. 397
of Jehoiachin or Jeconiah. The place of his exile,
as of others of his countrymen, was by the river Che-
bar, or Chaboras, a stream which empties into the
Euphrates from the east, about two hundred miles
north of Babylon* The first of his compositions
is dated in " the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's cap
tivity," about six years before the destruction of the
city ; f the latest date which occurs appears to denote
the sixteenth year after that event.J History has pre
served nothing relating to the circumstances or to the
time of his death.
The first three chapters of the book consist of in
troductory matter. Then follow twenty-one chapters
of denunciation of calamity against the Jewish people
on account of their sins, the subject being treated in a
manner similar to that of Jeremiah. The subject of the
next eight chapters is the demerits and the approach
ing calamities of neighbouring nations. In the thirty-
third and thirty-fourth chapters, Israel is again re
buked. The remainder of the book is occupied with
a succession of promises to Israel of a future age of
happiness and glory, interrupted in the thirty-fifth
chapter with a strain of menace against the Edomites,
and in the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth with similar
threats " against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief
prince of Meshech and Tubal." Most of the compo
sitions embraced in the book have no dates ; but, so
far as they are dated, they appear, with two exceptions,
to be arranged in the order respectively of the times
to which their production is referred. §

* Ezek.i. 1-3; comp. iii. 15, 2 Kings xxiv. 10-16.
f Ezek. i. 2. J xxix. 17.
§ The passage beginning at xxix. 1 has an earlier date than that begin
ning at xxvi. 1 ; and the date in xxix. 17 is later than those which follow in
xxxi. 1, xxxii. 1, and xxxii. 17.
VOL. III. 34

398 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
We seem to see a consequence of the priestly origin
of Ezekiel in the peculiar stress which he lays on re
ligious rites,* and the force with which they possess
his imagination."]* His countrymen considered his
writings to be remarkable for obscurity, to that degree
that, according to Jerome, they forbade the reading of
parts of them to all persons who had not reached the
age of thirty years. J Such obscurity as his is incident
to the rhetorical forms which always gain ground in
the decline of a literature. There is then apt to be
cultivated a curiously artificial imitation of ancient
models, running into detail and exaggeration in the
search for effect and for the appearance of novelty.
David and Isaiah sparingly used the bold figure of
Vision. Ezekiel continually resorts to it, and tasks
his imagination for every variety of minute embellish
ment. His descriptions of symbolical acts are in gen
eral of no sort of value as illustrations of the idea in
tended to be expressed. §
The book opens with an elaborate imitation of that
passage of Isaiah, in which the prophet had repre
sented himself as enjoying a vision of Jehovah in the
temple, and receiving from him his commission to the
office of a public censor. || Ezekiel says that, as he
was " among the captives by the river Chebar," " the
heavens were opened," and he too " saw Adsions of
God." As he looked, " behold, a stormy wind came
from the north, a great cloud, and a mass of fire."
* Comp. Ezek. iv. 14 ; xx. 16, 24 ; xxii. 8, 26.
f Comp. xliii. 13 - 17 ; xliv., xiv., xlvi., passim.
X " Ezekielem, prophetam cujus difficultatem Hebrasorum probat traditio.
Nam nisi quis apud eos aetatem sacerdotalis ministerii, id est, tricesimum
annum, impleverit, nee principia Geneseos, nee Canticum Canticorum, nee
hujus voluminis exordium et finem legere permittitur." Hieron. Prol. ad
Explan. in Ezech.
§ E. g. iv. 1-12; v. 1-4; xxiv. 3-5; xxxvii. 16, 17. || Is. vi.

LI-1 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 399
"Four living creatures" appeared in the midst of
the radiance. Their form was human ; they had hu
man hands, but the feet of kine ; and each had four
faces and four wings. One pair of the wings of each
was spread to touch the next on each side, the other
was folded over their bodies. The four faces of each
resembled those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle.
Without turning, they moved rapidly backwards and
forwards. "The appearance of the living creatures
was as coals of fire, burning like torches." Fire moved
about among them, and lightning flashed out from the
group.* By these four forms there stood upon the earth four
wheels, of the same shape, and blazing like chrysolites.
Their felloes were covered with eyes; they moved in
unison with the living creatures, as if guided by the
same will, and their motion too was in strait lines.
" Over the heads of the living creatures was the ap
pearance of a firmament, like crystal," which echoed
back the sound of their wings, " as the sound of great
waters, as the voice of the Almighty."
All this profuse expenditure of vague and unim
pressive imagery, the work of a pains-taking imagi
nation, vainly striving by an accumulation of incon
gruous ornaments to match the grand simplicity of
Isaiah, serves but to introduce the manifestation of
Jehovah, of whose appearance the conception is still
more unsatisfactory. Above the firmament, continues
the prophet, I seemed to see a throne of sapphire-
stone, on which sat a human form. Above the waist,
the form had " the appearance of bright brass," and
both above and beloAv, "the appearance of bright brass,"
* The recent discoveries by Layard of the buried sculptures of Nineveh
throw light on the sources of this imagery. See " Nineveh and its Re
mains," Vol. II. pp. 348-352.

400 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
and "the appearance of the rainbow." "This was the
appearance of the glory of Jehovah." *
The vision called on Ezekiel, who had fallen on
his face, to stand up, and receive a direction. Then
it bade him go to the people and rebuke them for
their rebellions and impiety, and to be steadfastly
faithful to that trust, in defiance of their threats and
persecutions. Further, it bade him open his mouth,
and eat what should be given him. It proved to be
a roll written over on both sides with " lamentation
and mourning and woe." Ezekiel ate it, and found
it sweet as honey. Then he was warned again of the
obduracy of those to whom his reproofs were to be ad
dressed, but instructed not to shrink on that account
from the duty laid upon him. Finally, he heard " the
sound, as of a great rushing, saying, ' Praised be the
majesty of Jehovah from his place ! '" It was followed
by " the noise of the wings of the living creatures,
that touched one another, and the noise of the wheels
beside them, even a noise of a great rushing.""|"
With a spirit saddened, but elevated and kindled
for his task by the ruminations poetically embodied in
this vision, Ezekiel sought " them of the captivity at
Tel-abib." But after all he found no freedom of utter
ance. He " dwelt astonished among them seven days."
But his convictions would not be stifled. Again he
* Ezek. i. 4 - 28. The best feature of these descriptions is a form of
expression frequently used by this writer; as, " the appearance of bright
brass" (4); "the appearance of a firmament" (22); " the appearance of
a throne"; "a form like that of a man" (26); " the form of a hand"
(viii. 3); " in form like a throne " (x. 1). It is copied by Milton : —
" What seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on ''
— Paradise Lost, Book 2, I. C72.
Milton has adopted some of th'e language of chapter i. in Paradise Lost,
Book 6, 1. 750 et seq.
f ii. 1 - iii. 13.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 401
seemed to hear the Divine command laid upon him, to
act the part of a faithful watchman for his people.
Again he seemed to hear Jehovah say, that if he failed
to perform the umvelcome duty, and "to warn the
wicked from his wicked way," he would himself share
the sin and the fate of the unhappy transgressors ; their
blood Avould be required at his hand ; while, if he did
but boldly utter his admonitions, whether they proved
effectual or not for the reformation and deliverance of
others, he would stand acquitted as to his own duty,
and would without fail deliver his own soul.* He
felt himself impelled to wander out " into the plain,"
for further communion with himself and with the
Lord. There he seemed to see a similar vision of Je
hovah, to that with which he had been visited " by
the river Chebar." Oppressed with timidity and de
spondence, he seemed to hear Jehovah say, that,
though by and by his mouth must be opened for a
bold rebuke of the rebellious nation, yet for the pres
ent he might go into retirement, and close his lips,
and " not be to them a reprover."
He pursued his meditations, or, to use his oAvn
form of language, he was further instructed in vision,
concerning the ruin of the capital city of his nation.
He seemed to hear himself directed to draw the out
line of the city on a tile or slate, with a sketch of the
machinery of a siege around its walls,"]" and to place
* Ezek. iii. 14-21.
+ " The most common mode of keeping records in Assyria and Baby
lonia was on prepared bricks, tiles, or cylinders of clay, baked after the in
scription was impressed. The characters appear to have been formed by an
instrument, or may sometimes have been stamped. The Chaldean priests
informed Calisthenes that they kept their astronomical observations on bricks
baked in the furnace  Ezekiel, who prophesied near the river
Chebar in Assyria, was commanded to take a tile and portray upon it the
city of Jerusalem. Of such records we have many specimens 
In many public and private collections there are inscriptions on tiles, and on
34*

402 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
an iron pan between it and himself, as a representation
of the instrument of a besieger's approach ; then to lie
down upon his left side three hundred and ninety
days, to signify (reckoning a day for a year) the dura
tion of " the iniquity of the house of Israel," and af
terwards upon his right side forty days, to signify the
duration of " the iniquity of the house of Judah."
He was to live, during the former period, on a slender
quantity of mean vegetable food, cooked with a fire
made of offal, and to quench his thirst .with a scant
allowance of water, thereby denoting the coming na
tional distress, for " Jehovah said, ' Even thus shall
the sons of Israel eat their polluted food among the
nations whither I will drive them.'" Part of the
prescribed ceremonial, however, he was permitted to
change, on his declaration that from his youth he had
never been polluted.*
barrel-shaped cylinders of baked clay." — Layard, " Nineveh and its Re
mains," &c, Vol. II. pp. 147-149.
* Ezek. iii. 22 -iv. 17. — "Three hundred and ninety days; so long
shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast
accomplished them, then lie upon thy right side, and bear the iniquity of the
house of Judah forty days. I have appointed thee a day for a year " (iv.-5,
6). If specifications of time in these writings are to be literally interpreted,
nothing can be more exact than what we have here. If the credit of the
writer is to be defended on the basis of such an interpretation, the critic is
just as much bound to find out something in Jewish history corresponding to
these numbers, as to prove that there was a captivity of seventy years ac
cording with the language in Jer.^xxv., xxix. But how is that case to be
made out? The "three hundred and ninety days," according to the re
ceived explanation , refer to the time which elapsed between the establish
ment of the northern kingdom by the revolt of Jeroboam, and the capture
and sack of Jerusalem. That time, according to the received chronology,
was in fact three hundred and eighty-seven years, the latter event occurring
in six years instead of the nine that Ezekiel had fixed (comp. i. 2, iv. 5) as
still remaining after his own mention of it, — a correspondence hardly close
enough for supernatural foresight. But what propriety in supposing the
time mentioned to have any thing to do with the fall of Jerusalem? It is
" the iniquity of the house of Israel " that is spoken of, in distinction from
" the iniquity of the house of Judah." What had Jerusalem, the capital of

LI-] EZEKIEL I. 1.- XXIV. 27. 403
Again he seemed to hear himself directed to shave
his head and face, and divide the hair by weight into
three equal parts, of which he was to burn one " in
the midst of the city, when the days of the siege were
fulfilled"; another he was to strike with a sword; and
the third he was to scatter in the wind, where God was
to strike it Avith a sword. A small portion of the hair
he was to retain, and fold in his clothes ; of this, too,
he Avas to burn a part, and from it a fire was to " come
forth upon the whole house of Israel." All this trans
action, he seemed to hear Jehovah say, was a represen
tation of the nation's fate. It had refused his ordi
nances, and not walked in his statutes. Therefore he
would visit it with a dreadful retribution, such as was
without a precedent in all time past, and should be
without a parallel in all time to come. Famished
fathers should feed upon their children, and children
on their fathers, and the wretched remnant should be
scattered over the face of the earth. One third should
die by pestilence and famine, one third by the sword,
and one third should be dispersed to the four winds.
Jehovah would glut his rage against Judah. She
should become " a reproach, and a reviling, and a warn
ing, and an astonishment to the nations round about."*

" the house of Judah," to do with "the house of Israel"? Again ; the
text is" uncertain. For " three hundred and ninety," the Syriac and Arabic
versions read " one hundred and ninety." But with this reading we are just
as much at a loss, if it is a literal interpretation that we seek. "The in
iquity of Israel " lasted two hundred and fifty-five years, from the revolt to
the Assyrian conquest ; and Ezekiel knew this, for he was writing a hun
dred and twenty-five years after the latter event. Once more ; interpreting
literally, what are we to say of the "forty days" denoting the time of
" the iniquity of the house of Judah "? Of this no explanation has been
given sufficiently plausible to become current. The error is in supposing
the writer to be composing from supernatural foreknowledge, and then
searching for facts to maintain a sense such as he never intended to convey.
* Ezek. v. 1-17.

404 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
This proportion of the victims suffering by different
kinds of ruin is very exactly stated. The emphatic
precision of the statement is heightened by the recital
of the weighing of the hair into three parts. Who
pretends to prove, by way of sustaining the writer's
credit, that the nation perished in three equal parts,
according to this specification "? Yet there is just as
much reason for such an argument in this case as in
others in which the commentators toil to make it out.
If Ezekiel meant here to declare that, by force of su
pernatural foresight, he knew that the Jewish nation
was to be destroyed in three equal parts by three
equal kinds of visitation, it only remains to be said
that the facts of subsequent history do not sustain the
pretension. Yet if it cannot be maintained from the
mere phraseology of this passage that the writer in
tended a precise prediction of future events, it is ut
terly unsafe to assert, on the same ground, that such
was the design of other portions of these writings.
In much of the imagery employed by Ezekiel in the
passages which we have been examining, I cannot pre
tend to point out any pertinency. I cannot profess
any admiration of the taste which dictated them.
Jewish poetry, like that of other nations, had its pe
culiar forms, and those peculiarities the genius of
Ezekiel appears to have led him to exaggerate to an
extraordinary, not to say grotesque, degree. But
the singular habits of thought which led him into
such adventurous poetical delineations may, after all,
to a sober judgment, appear far less singular than
those which have led his critics to comment on such
poetical flights as if they were sober narrative prose.
The sixth and seArenth chapters embrace a passage
in a more simple strain, presenting with little variety
the usual topics of menace and rebuke. Jehovah will

LI-] EZEKIEL I. l.-XXIV. 27. 405
bring the sword upon Israel, and destroy the high
places, and lay waste the altars, and shatter the ima
ges, and slay the worshippers, and scatter their bones
about the places of their impious service* though still
a remnant shall be spared, who shall find safety in
flight to distant regions, and there shall be Avon back
by their sufferings to a better mind."f Famine, pesti
lence, and the sword will be his ministers to execute
his exterminating wrath upon them, till from the utter
desolation of the land they learn that he is Jehovah. J
Again and again it is repeated that he will judge them
according to their ways, and speedily punish them
without pity.§ Pride and violence will soon bear their
fruit, and it will ripen in hopeless universal woe. The
labor of buyer and seller will be vain. The signal
trumpet for battle will blow, but there will be none to
answer it. || The SAVord will glut itself in the fields,
and famine and pestilence depopulate the city. The
wretched fugitives will faint with weakness, and clothe
themselves in the garb of mourning. The wealth
which was their pride and their temptation will yield
no supply for their hunger. It shall be cast into the
streets, and strangers shall divide it, and the very
sanctuary where it was stored shall be desecrated by
the presence of robbers.^" " The most cruel among the
nations " shall trample on their pride, and defile their
holy places, and occupy their houses, and lead aAvay
the blood-guilty tenants in chains.**
" Destruction eometh;
And they shall seek peace, and not find it.
Calamity shall come upon calamity,
And rumor shall be upon rumor ;
And they shall seek a vision from the prophet in vain ;
Instruction shall perish from the priests,
* Ezek. vi. 1-7. tvi-8-10- J vi. 11-14. § vii. 1-9.
H vii. 10-14. 1 vii. 15-23. ** vii. 23,24.

406 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
And counsel from the elders.
The king shall mourn,
And the prince shall be clothed with amazement ;
And the hands of the people of the land shall be troubled.
I will do to them according to their way, and according to their deserts
will I judge them,
And they shall know that I am Jehovah." — vii. 25 -27.
Musing on the enormities of idol-worship practised
in the city of his fathers, Ezekiel next conceives of
himself as transported within its sacred precincts, and,
in a composition arranged in our copies in four chap
ters, he runs the round of the three great topics usu
ally treated in these writings ; namely, the wickedness
of the nation, the punishment which its wickedness
provoked, and its eventual restoration to prosperity
and glory.
As he sat in his house in Chaldea, he says, sur
rounded by the captive Israelitish elders, he seemed to
see a fiery form approach, which, putting forth " the
form of a hand," and lifting him by his hair, conveyed
him through the air to Jerusalem, and set him down
at " the door of the inner gate, that looketh toward
the north." * " The glory of the God of Israel was
there, according to the vision seen in the plain." The
vision bade him look toward the north, and there, to
his horror, at the entrance of the very temple inclo-
sure, he beheld the " idol of jealousy," a sight of
abomination fit to banish Jehovah from his own sanc
tuary. I The vision next bade him push through a
breach in the wall, and having done so, he " went in
* Ezek. viii. 1-3. — "In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth
day of the month" (1). This was at most four hundred and twenty-five
days after the prophet received the command to lie fouT hundred and thirty
days on his side (comp. i. 1, 2 ; iv. 4 -6). The friends of a literal interpre
tation must accordingly understand that he was conveyed through the air
to the temple at Jerusalem at the same time that he was lying at length
by the river Chaboras in Chaldea.
f viii. 4-6.

LI] EZEKIEL I. 1.- XXIV. 27. 407
and saAV, and behold, every form of creeping things,
and of abominable beasts, and all the idols of the
house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round
about." * Seventy Israelitish elders stood there, each
with a censer in his hand, from which went up " a
thick cloud of incense " ; and the vision said that
they ventured on such impiety, because they thought
that Jehovah had forsaken the land and would not
witness their abominations.-]"
Then it brought him to another part of the temple,
where " sat women, weeping for Thammuz " ; and yet
worse, in " the inner court of the house of Jehovah,"
" between the porch and the altar, were about five-and-
twenty men, with their backs toAvard the temple of
Jehovah, and their faces toward the east ; and they
bowed themselves eastward toward the sun," — an af
front to the majesty of Jehovah which would not per
mit him to spare or have pity.J
Accordingly, the ministers of vengeance are sum
moned. Six armed men appeared, and took their post
* Ezek. viii. 7-10. — This vision seems like the original of the similar
ones recorded of St. Francis of Assisi, and of Baron Swedenborg.
f viii. 11-13.
X viii. 14-18. — " There sat women, weeping for Thammuz " (14) ; the
Syrian Adonis. " Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day ;
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded. The love-tale
Infected Zion's daughters with like heat,
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eyes surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah." — Paradise Lost, Book 1, 1. 446 et seq.
" They bowed themselves eastward toward the sun " (16) ; the Persian
idolatry. — " They put the branch to their nostrils" (17); this has been
said to be a ceremony of the Persian ritual. But the text is doubtful. The
Septuagint, Syriac, Chaldee, and Arabic translators understood a gesture of
derision to be intended.

408 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
"beside the brazen altar." One came with them,
" clothed with linen, with a writer's ink-horn by his
side." " The glory of the God of Israel went up from
the cherub, upon which it was, to the threshold of the
house." Thence Jehovah called to the man with the
ink-horn, and bade him go " through the midst of the
city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark
upon the forehead of the men " who deplored the pre
vailing abominable wickedness. All the rest of the
inhabitants of the city the armed men were command
ed to slay and destroy without mercy, beginning with
the sanctuary. Accordingly, they began with the
elders, leaving their bodies where they fell, within the
temple precincts. When they passed out into the city
in pursuit of further victims, the prophet ventured to
intercede in his brethren's behalf. But the vision re
plied, that there could be no mercy. " And lo, the
man clothed with linen, who had the ink-horn by his
side, returned answer, saying, ' I have done as thou
hast commanded me.' " *
The sapphire throne again appeared "in the fir
mament that was above the head of the cherubs,"
who " stood upon the right side of the house," while
" the house was filled with the cloud, and the court
was filled with the brightness of the glory of Jeho
vah, and the sound of the wings of the cherubs was
heard even to the outer court, as the voice of God,
the Almighty, when he speaketh." The voice bade
the man clothed with linen to " go in between the
wheels under the cherub," fill his hands with fiery
coals, and scatter them over the city. " He went in,
and stood beside the wheels. And one cherub stretch
ed forth his hand from between the cherubs to the fire
that was between the cherubs, and took thereof, and

* Ezek. ix. 1 - 1 1.

LI-] EZEKIEL I. 1.- XXIV. 27. 4Q9
put it into the hands of him that was clothed with
linen, who took it, and went out. And there was
seen in the cherubs the form of a man's hand under
their wings." *
Four Avheels of chrysolite appeared by the side of
the four cherubs. " All four had one form, as if a
wheel were in the midst of a wheel " ; " and the
Avheels were full of eyes round about." " Each one
of them was called Whirlwind. And every one had
four faces. The first face was the face of a cherub,
and the second face was the face of a man, and the
third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an
eagle." The semblance and the movements of both
cherubs and wheels were the same as of those Avhich
had been seen by the river Chebar. f " Then the glory
of Jehovah departed from the threshold of. the house,
and stood over the cherubs. And the cherubs lifted up
their wings, and mounted up from the earth, 
and the wheels were beside them. And they stood
at the entrance of the east gate of the house of Je
hovah, and the glory of the God of Israel Avas over
them above. "J
Ezekiel too was brought " to the east gate of the
house of Jehovah, that looketh toward the east."
There, by the entrance, he saw " five-and-twenty men,"
and among them " Jaazaniah, the son of Azur, and
Pelatiah, the son of Benaiah, princes of the people."
The voice said, " These are the men that devise mis
chief, and form evil designs in this city ; Avho say,
' The time is not near that we should build houses;

* Ezek. x. 1-8. t Comp. i. 5-21.
X x. 9-22. — "Each one of them was called Whirlwind " (13). Dr.
Noyes well avoids the palpable nonsense of the common version, and New-
come's : — "As to the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, ' 0
wheel!'" vol. iii. 35

410 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
this city is the caldron, and we are the flesh.' There
fore prophesy against them, prophesy, O son of man ! "
This accordingly the prophet proceeds to do, denoun
cing against them the severities of Divine judgment.
They shall be delivered, he says, into the hands of
strangers. The sword, which they have dreaded, shall
come upon them, and they shall fall by it on the bor
ders of their land.*
Even while the prophet was thus speaking, Pelatiah,
one of those whom he addressed, fell dead. This pain
ful sight led him again to intercede with Jehovah, who
was pleased at last to assure him that, though dispersed
in foreign banishment far 'away from their homes, it
should be for a short time only, and during that time
he would " be to them as a sanctuary." The incorrigi
bly Avicked could not expect his favor, but it was his
purpose to bring his people to repentance ; for " Thus
saith the Lord, Jehovah :' I will gather you from the
nations, and assemble you from the countries, where
ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land
of Israel. And they shall come thither, and they
shall take away from thence all the detestable things
thereof, and all the abominations thereof. And I will
give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit with
in them; and I will take out of them the heart of
stone, and will give them a heart of flesh, that they
may walk in my statutes, and observe my ordinances,
and keep them; and they shall be my people, and I
Avill be their God."")"
* Ezek. xi. 1-12. — "The time is not near," &c. (3); I can make
nothing of this, nor of the turn given to it in vv. 7, 11, 15. The interpre
tations proposed by the commentators are mere unsatisfactory and random
conjecture. The guess of the Septuagint translators, I think, comes the
nearest to a sense, — " Is it not lately that we have built houses here ? " &c. ;
implying that they might hope still to live in them long.
i xi. 13-21. — With 16-20 comp. Jer. xxxii. 37-42.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 41 1
This done, the cherubs spread their wings, and the
Avheels moved beside them, and " the glory of Je
hovah went up from the midst of the city, and stood
upon the mountain which is on the east side of the
city." The vision disappeared, and the prophet found
himself again in Chaldea. Then he "spake to them
of the captivity all the words of Jehovah, which he
had shoAved." *
In the twelfth chapter, Ezekiel represents himself as
being directed by Jehovah to make preparations " for
removing from the land," from " the midst of a re
bellious house." He was to do it "in their sight,"
for " it may be," he was told, " they will consider."
He was to bring out his goods from his house by day,
and himself to " go forth at even, as they that go forth
into captivity." He was to " break through the wall,"
and " carry forth in the twilight," and he was to cover
his face, so as not to see the ground. And all this
was to be for " a sign to the house of Israel." f
He did in all things as he was bidden, and then
he was told to explain the transaction thus : — " Say
to them, Thus saith the Lord, Jehovah: This bur
den concerneth the prince in Jerusalem, and all the
house of Israel that is therein. Say, I am your sign.
As I have done, so shall it be done to them. They
shall remove and go into captivity. And the prince
that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in
the twilight, and shall go forth. They shall break
through the wall to carry forth thereby; he shall
cover his face, that he see not the ground with his
eyes. I will also spread my net upon him, and he
shall be taken in my snare, and I will bring him to
Babylon, into the land of the Chaldeans ; yet he shall
* Ezek. xi. 22 - 25. t xii- 1 " 6-

412 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
not see it, though he shall die there. And all that
are round about him to help him, and all his bands,
will I scatter to every wind ; and I will draw out the
SAVord after them. And they shall know that I am
Jehovah, when I shall disperse them among the na
tions, and scatter them in the countries. But I will
leave a few men of them from the sword, from the
famine, and from the pestilence ; that they may declare
all their abominations among the heathen, whither
they come; and they shall know that I am Jehovah."*
This is understood to be a prediction of the fate of
Zedekiah, with such a specification of some attendant
circumstances, declared in the history to have actually
occurred,")" as to indicate for the prediction a super
natural character.
The particular circumstances relied upon to prove
supernatural prediction are two. It is understood to
be declared by Ezekiel, — 1. That the prince and his
attendants should leave Jerusalem through a breach
made by them in the wall ; 2. That though he should
die at Babylon, he should not see it, having been
blinded, as the history relates, previously to being
conveyed thither. J
As to the correspondence, supposed to be so re
markable, between the language of Ezekiel respecting
the king's passage through a breach in the wall, and
the actual fact related in the history as having sub
sequently occurred, the truth is, that correspondence
is merely imaginary. The history bears witness to
no such fact whatever. On the contrary, it expressly
and repeatedly testifies that Zedekiah " went forth out
of the city by night, by the way of the king's garden,
by the gate betwixt the two walls." Where, but among
* Ezek. xii. 7-16.
f 2 Kings xxv. 4-7; Jer. xxxix. 4-7; Iii. 7.-11. J xii. 12, 13.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 413
the dull, or heedless, or dishonest tribe of commenta
tors upon Scripture, shall we find reasoning such as
this, founding a most important conclusion on an as
sumed historical fact, when history not merely fails
to supply the fact, but actually supplies a different one
in its stead?
But Ezekiel, it is said, foretold that Zedekiah would
die at Babylon without seeing it, — a remarkable para
dox, which was unriddled by his eyes being put out
before he arrived there.
In the first place, was any thing like this Ezekiel's
meaning ] In the twelfth verse, which has the closest
connection with that which follows, so that it cannot
be left out of view in the interpretation of the latter,
there is considerable variety of reading in the ancient
versions. The Septuagint and Arabic read, — " He will
cover his face, so as not to be seen by any eye, and
he himself shall not see the ground." The sense, as
these translators understood it, evidently was, that, by
reason of the veil which was used to hide him
from other eyes on his hasty journey, he would not
be able to use his own. These translators lived
long after the event, and if in their day the event
had been supposed to have an extraordinary corre
spondence with a prediction, they would by no means
have disguised that correspondence by such a render
ing as they have given of Ezekiel's words.
Again, if literal prediction was intended by Eze
kiel, what sense are we to put on Zedekiah's having
Jehovah's net spread upon him, and being taken in
his snare X *
Again, suppose that Ezekiel did mean to threaten
that Zedekiah should be blinded by his captors, and
* Ezek. xii. 13.
35*

414 EZEKIEL 1. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
that they did actually inflict on him this cruelty, was
such a course so uncommon, that the foretelling of
it must be understood as arguing supernatural fore
knowledge 1 On the contrary, it was one of the forms
of ill-treatment of prisoners taken in war,* and there
was in this respect so little that was peculiar in the
fate of Zedekiah, that, in a parallel passage of the
same prophet, no mention whatever is made of it.f
Once more, suppose the remarks already made on
this passage to be entirely erroneous, — suppose that
Ezekiel meant to describe a definite act which actually
occurred, and which before its occurrence could only
have been known through supernatural illumination, —
it remains to be said that Ave have no evidence what
ever for dating the description at a time previous to
the event described. For any thing that appears, it
was, in poetical form, a commemoration of a known
past transaction. It will not do to say that the chap
ter in which the language occurs is inserted before a
passage itself dated four or five years before Zedekiah's
capture, X &nd that this therefore must be dated earlier
still. It will not do to argue thus, because the order
of dates, as we have already seen, is not observed
throughout the book ; § and again, because on the
same ground that we should date this chapter earlier
than the twentieth, we should have to date it later
than the first and eighth ; || but these refer to times
when Ezekiel had been already five or six years a
prisoner in Chaldea, whereas the passage now under
our examination, if we are to interpret it literally,
* Judges xvi. 21 ; 1 Sam. xi. 2.
f Comp. Ezek. xvii. 18-21. — Newcome himself says of Zedekiah, that
" his eyes were afterwards put out, agreeably to the savage custom of Eastern
conquerors." — " Attempt towards an Improved Version," &c, Pref. , p. viii.
X Comp. xx. 1. § See above, p. 397.
|| i. 1, 2 ; viii. 1.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 415
belongs to a period when he was living peaceably
among his countrymen at Jerusalem.*
In the remainder of the chapter, the prophet repre
sents himself as charged with directions to " the in
habitants of Jerusalem in the land of Israel." He is
to eat his " bread with quaking," and drink his " water
with trembling and with carefulness," and to inform
them that they would have to do the same, and that
their land would be " desolate from all that is therein,
because of the violence of them that dwell in it." He
was to tell them that there was no truth in a current
saying, by which they encouraged themselves and one
another to hope for a delay of the merited retributions,
and to urge upon them that there should be no longer
"any vain vision or deceptive divination," and that
none of Jehovah's words should " be deferred any
more," but that even in their own days would he both
speak and fulfil his word.f
The thirteenth chapter is a strain of invective against
persons, both male and female, who deluded the people
with false teachings and flattering promises. They
had not spoken for Jehovah. They had not used their
gifts to guide, guard, and serve their countrymen, but
to mislead and betray them. Jehovah would not own
them as his. Their names should not stand on the
register of his people. The fabric of deception they
set up, when they cried " Peace," while there was no
peace, was but a wall built with untempered mortar.
The stormy winds and rains of Jehovah should be let
loose upon it, and level it Avith the ground. Thus
should his fury be accomplished at once " upon the
wall, and upon them that daubed it with untempered
mortar."| A woe, too, awaits the women " who proph-
* Ezek. xii. 2, 3, 5, 11. f xii- 17-28. J xiii. 1 - 16.

416 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
esy out of their OAvn heart," and " ensnare men to de
struction," " slaying them that should not die, and sav
ing them alive that should not live," and " strength
ening the hands of the wicked, that he should not
return from his wicked way, by promising him life."
Jehovah will deliver his people out of their hand, and
make them know his power.*
" Certain men of the elders of Israel " came to com
mune with the prophet. He knew, or believed, that
they had before sought counsel less safe, that they had
" set up their idols in their heart, and put the stum
bling-block of their iniquity before their face," and he
seemed to hear Jehovah say that he should give no
satisfaction to such a person, but should only charge
him to turn from his idols and his abominations, and
warn him that Jehovah would " set his face against
him, and make him a sign and a proverb, and cut him
off from the midst of the people"; and that, as to the
false teacher by whom he had been misled, Jehovah,
who had himself blinded that teacher, would " stretch
out his hand upon him, and destroy him from the
midst of the people." Both should " bear the punish
ment of their iniquity." Deceiver and dupe should
feel the penalty alike, " that the house of Israel may
no more go astray from me, saith the Lord Jehovah,
nor be polluted any more with all their transgressions,
but that they may be my people, and I may be their
God."t In the remainder of the chapter it appears to be the
prophet's design to vindicate the rectitude of JehoArah
alike when in judgment he refuses to spare, and Avhen
in compassion he spares. When a land, he says, incurs
his displeasure by grievous transgression, and he pro-
* Ezek. xiii. 17-23. f xiv. 1-11.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1.— XXIV. 27. 417
ceeds to punish it by famine, by incursions of wild
beasts, by the sword or by the pestilence, it is right
that, even if it have three citizens as virtuous as Noah,
Daniel, and Job, their virtue should only rescue them
selves from the universal ruin* Jerusalem has no
claim to exemption from this reasonable rule. Still,
in Jerusalem " shall be left a remnant that shall be
brought forth, sons and daughters." And the purpose
of this course will be, that, Avhen men see the wicked
practices of those who are thus preserved, they may
own the justice of the fate of those who were cut off,
and know that " not without cause" Jehovah has thus
dealt with them.f
While the vine lives and is fruitful, it is a growth
of special value. When it is dead, its wood is not fit
" to be wrought into any work," or shaped into any
utensil. It is fit for nothing but to burn, and when
burned its ashes are more worthless still. So, too,
says the prophet in the fifteenth chapter, is it with
Jerusalem, and that too is destined to be consumed in
the flames. J
The sixteenth chapter is a composition in a style
utterly abhorrent to good taste, The perfidious im
piety and ingratitude of the nation of Israel are set
forth under the image of a licentious woman, raised
from a condition of foul and helpless wretchedness to
be made a wife, gratified by her husband with all
fondness and indulgence, and then requiting him with
shameless infidelity. It is impossible to folloAV the
gross details with which this idea is largely illus
trated. It is difficult to imagine that the writer could
* Ezek. xiv. 12-20. — The mention of Daniel, a contemporary of the
prophet, along with those worthies of ancient story, Noah and Job, indicates
a singular estimation of that person.
f xiv. 21-23. J xv. 1-8.

418 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
have intended" such a record of idle musings to sur
vive him.*
For this the punishment of Israel should be signal
and exemplary. The accomplices of her guilt should
be the instruments of her destruction. •)• Yet, depraved
as she had been, emulating the idolatrous Amorite
and Hittite, surpassing Samaria and even Sodom in
the loathsomeness of her sin, still his own abandoned
people, as well as those less favored nations, would
Jehovah in time lead back from captivity, and receive
again to his favor. J
" For thus saith the Lord, Jehovah : I will do to
thee as thou hast done, who hast despised the oath
and hast broken the covenant. But I will remember
my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I
will establish with thee an everlasting covenant. Then
shalt thou remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when
thou shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy
younger, and I shall give them to thee for. daughters,
but not by thy observance of thy covenant. But I will
establish my covenant with thee, and thou shalt know
that I am Jehovah ; that thou mayst remember and be
confounded, and not .open thy mouth any more for
shame, when I forgive thee all which thou hast done,
saith the Lord, Jehovah." §
Jehoiachin had been dethroned by the Babylonian
conqueror, and Zedekiah set in his place. But Zede
kiah was repeating the follies and temerity of his pre
decessor, and a similar fate must before long overtake
him. Another prince from the royal stock should
however succeed to his abdicated sway, and under him
the reinvigorated nation should flourish. These are
the ideas strikingly, though diffusely, set forth in the
* Ezek. xvi. 1-34. f xvi. 35-43.
X xvi. 44-58. § xvi. 59-63.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 419
well-conceived imagery of the seventeenth chapter.
The royal house of Judah is represented by a cedar-
tree, groAving on Mount Lebanon, with Jehoiachin,
the reigning monarch, for its topmost branch. The
king of Babylon, " a great eagle, with great Avings,
Avith long feathers, full of plumage, which had divers
colors," cropped the bough, and carried it away. In
its place he set out " one of the shoots of the land."
But the substituted prince was tributary to himself.
The slip was a willow, and no cedar. As such " it
grew and became a spreading vine, of low stature,
whose branches turned towards him, and whose roots
were under him." *
But from Egypt there came " another great eagle
with great wings and many feathers " ; and the vine,
forgetting its proper allegiance, turned now in the
other direction, and " bent its roots toward him, and
shot forth its branches toward him, that he might
water it." It deserves that penalty of ingratitude
and rebellion that awaits it. " It was planted in a
good soil, by great waters, that it might bring forth
branches, and bear fruit, and be a goodly vine." Shall
not its outraged benefactor " pull up its roots, and
cut off its fruit, that it wither " 1 " Shall it not utterly
Avither, when the east wind toucheth if? It shall
wither in the beds where it grew." "j"
This is sense and poetry, and so perspicuous that it
hardly seems to require explanation, at least for con
temporaries of the events referred to. Yet the writer,
who is not content to hint any thing, gives the ex
planation in full, and repeats the doom of Zedekiah
in part of the same words in which it had been an
nounced in another composition, f
* Ezek. xvii. 1-6. f xvii. 7-10.
X xvii. 11-21; comp. xii. 12-16.

420 EZEKIEL I. 1. -XXIV. 27. [LECT.
If Ezekiel expected, as appears from the last verses
of the chapter, that, as Jehoiachin had been succeeded
by Zedekiah, so to Zedekiah should succeed another
shoot from the royal stock, to "bring forth boughs,
and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar," and shelter
" birds of every wing in the shadow of its branches,"
it is plain that so far he was in error.* Gedaliah, who
actually did succeed Zedekiah according to the history,
succeeded him as governor, not as king. He did not
belong to the reigning house. And in nothing did
his character or course answer to the vivid description
of the prophet.")"
Next follows, in a different strain, one of those ex
cellent and weighty passages of Ezekiel, which so sat
isfactorily redeem the eccentricities, on the one hand,
and the inanities, on the other, of a great portion of
his book. It is a discourse of the most solid, ethical
wisdom. In opposition to an error which a sophistical
casuistry had perhaps draAvn from the language of the
second commandment, and had embodied in the say
ing, " The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the
children's teeth are set on edge," Ezekiel teaches the
doctrine of a true and enlightened religion, that father
and son are both alike before an impartial parental
God, — alike in his benignant regard, alike in their
separate individual responsibility ; that, no matter what
may be the virtues or the demerit of an ancestor, " the
soul that sinneth, it shall die," and the righteous soul
" shall surely live." X If the good man's son dishonor
* Ezek. xvii. 22-24.
f 2 Kings xxv. 22 - 25 ; Jer. xl., xii. I have said above that Gedaliah
was not of the royal family ; for this, comp. 2 Kings xxii. 12 ; xxv. 22 ; 2
Chron. xxxiv. 15 ; Ezek. viii. 11.
X Ezek. xviii. 1-9. Ezekiel's high estimation of the ritual, before re
ferred to, colors his picture of the righteous man in this passage ; but it is
pleasing to see how the strictly moral element predominates.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 421
his parent's memory by an unworthy course, his
parent's goodness will avail him nothing* On the
other hand, if a bad man's son rejects his father's ex
ample, he shall escape his father's punishment. To
each, unshared and uncommunicated, belongs the rec
ompense of his own deeds. "The righteousness of
the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness
of the wicked shall be upon him." Such is Jehovah's
absolutely established law.f
But that which no other man can do for him, it is in
every man's power to do for himself. The wicked man
may avert the doom of his wickedness ; by repentance
and an amended life he may win back the lost favor
of Jehovah, who has not " any pleasure at all that the
wicked should die." And, on the other hand, the good
man has no inalienable store of merit laid up ; he will
abandon the rewards of a virtuous life, should he be
so self-abandoned as to depart from virtue ; then " all
his righteousness, which he hath done, shall not be
remembered ; for his trespass which he hath trespassed,
and for his sin which he hath sinned, for them shall he
die." X The backslider will fall into ruin, while the
penitent will find favor. Such, and no other, is the
rule of justice which, however unreasonable men may
inquire, and object, and complain, Jehovah approves
and recognizes, and will surely execute. He would
have the house of Israel know his will, and heed his
threats and invitations, and direct the course of their
lives accordingly. §
The nineteenth chapter, a retrospect of the national
disasters of the few preceding years, is, in vigor and
taste, a favorable specimen of the writer's poetical vein.
Judea is in the first place presented under the image
* Ezek. xviii. 10-13. t xvi". 14-20.
X xviii. 21-24. $ xviii. 25-32.
VOL. III. 36

422 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
of a lioness rearing her whelps. One, whom she had
brought up securely till he became valiant, cunning,
rapacious, and renowned, was at length caught in a
pit, and led aAvay captive " with nose-rings to the land
of Egypt." It is Jehoahaz, son and next successor of
Josiah, that is here referred to, and the images corre*
spond with his history. Having waited in vain long
enough for his return, " she -took another of her
whelps, and she made him a young lion " ; * and his
course and his fate were the same, except that he was
carried prisoner to a different country. He too
" went up and down among the lions ; he became a young lion,
And he learned to seize the prey ; he devoured men.
He knew their widows, and kid waste their cities,
And the land was desolate, and all that was therein, before the voice of
his roaring.
Then the nations set themselves against bim on every side from the prov
inces,
And spread their net over him ;
He was taken in their pit.
And they put him with nose-rihgs into a cage.
And brought him to the king of Babylon ;
And they carried him to a stronghold,
That his voice might be heard no more
Upon the mountains of Israel." — xix. 6-0.f
Next, the nation, still called the mother of the tribes
of Israel, is represented under a different figure ; no
longer as a lioness, but as a vine, — "a vine planted
by the waters," " fruitful and full of branches," emi
nent in height, and Stretching out her strong limbs
* Ezek. xix. 1-5; comp. 2 Kings xxiii. 31-35.
f Jehoiakim (2 Kings xxiii. 34) was the immediate successor of Jehoa
haz. But if we rely on 2 Kings xxiv. 6, Jer. xxii. 18, 19 (on the other
hand see 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6) , Jehoiakim was not carried to Babylon. He
too is related to have been placed on the throne by the king of Egypt (2
Kings xxiii. 34), contrary to what seems to be intimated in Ezek. xix. 5.
Perhaps his son and successor, Jehoiachin (2 Kings xxiv. 6-12), who
reigned three months, was intended by the prophet. The skipping over a
reign, for the purpose of a juxtaposition of two analogous facts in the his
tory, is not inconsistent with the character of such poetry.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1.- XXIV. 27. 423
like royal sceptres. But thrifty and stately as she
was, she was doomed to decay and perish. The rage
of foes has toiled at her roots, she has been bent to
the ground, her swelling fruit has been blasted, and
her strong boughs torn off. Withered and dead, they
have become fit but to feed the flames. All that is
left standing of her now " is planted in the desert, in
a dry and thirsty land." So lamentable is the condi
tion of her who was but now so great.*
" Certain of the elders of Israel " having come to
inquire of him his opinion as to what were the de
signs of Jehovah's providence concerning the people,
Ezekiel found himself moved to justify his prognosti
cations of evil by a survey of the perverse course of
the people in all past time. As long ago as the period
when Jehovah first chose " the race of the house of
Jacob," and made himself " known to them in the land
of Egypt," and proposed to lead them " into a land
selected for them, flOAving with milk and honey, the
glory of all lands," they had disgusted him by their
stupidity and ingratitude, and their adherence to the
Egyptian idols, and he had thought to wreak his ven
geance on them even where they were.f But he " acted
for his name's sake, that it might not be dishonored in
the sight of the nations, in the midst of whom they
were," and " brought them forth out of the land of
Egypt, and led them into the wilderness," and gave
them wholesome laws, and established his Sabbaths,
for a sign between himself and them. X Again in the
desert they rebelled, despising his salutary laws, and
profaning his Sabbaths, and again he thought to pour
out his consuming fury upon them in the desert, and
to desist from his purpose of bringing them " into the
* Ezek. xix. 10-14. f xx. 1-8. J xx. 9-12.

424 EZEKIEL I. 1.— XXIV. 27. [LECT.
land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all
lands." But again he " acted for his name's sake, that
it might not be dishonored before the nations, in whose
sight they had been brought forth." So his " eye
spared them," and he did not " make an end of them
in the desert," but renewed the charge " to their sons
in the desert," to walk in his statutes, and keep his
ordinances, and hallow his Sabbaths, and know him
for Jehovah, their God.*
But the sons too rebelled. They did not walk in
his statutes, nor keep his wholesome ordinances, but
dishonored his Sabbaths. Then he thought to pour
out his fury upon them, and accomplish his anger
upon them in the desert ; and he " gave them statutes
that were not good, and ordinances by which they
should not live," and " polluted them in their offerings,
in that they caused every first-born child to pass
through the fire " ; and he swore that he " would scat
ter them among the nations, and disperse them through
the countries." Still even then he did not execute all
his purposed vengeance, but " held back his hand, and
acted for his name's sake, that it should not be dis
honored before the nations, in whose sight he had
brought them forth." f
But he would not always be so lenient. Hitherto
his long-suffering had only been repaid by ingratitude
more offensive. When, undeserving as the people had
been, he had brought them, into the promised land,
" then they saw every high hill, and all the thick trees,
and there they offered their sacrifices, and there they
presented their provoking oblation, and there they
brought their sweet savor, and poured out their drink-
offerings," and when he questioned and rebuked, still
* Ezek. xx. 13-20. f xx. 21-26.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 425
they persisted.* It was in vain for such offenders to
supplicate Jehovah. And in vain would they look for
protection to the idols, the " wood and stone," which
other nations Avorshipped. Since they would not have
Jehovah rule over them with mild paternal sway, he
would rule over them " with a mighty hand, and with a
stretched out arm, and with fury poured out." As he
had contended with their fathers " in the desert of the
land of Egypt," so, wherever the children were scattered
throughout the world, he would collect them and con
tend with them "in the desert of the nations." f So
he would bring them " under the rod," and " into the
bond of the covenant." Those who continued rebel
lious, Avhen brought back from the countries of their
exile, should not " enter into the land of Israel." Let
all, then, choose whom they would serve. Those who
would not serve Jehovah, let them go serve " every
one his idols." But let them render that service some
where else than at Jerusalem. Upon Jehovah's " holy
mountain, upon the lofty mountain of Israel, there
shall all the house of Israel, all that are in the land,"
serve Jehovah, and him alone. And there will he
graciously accept them and their offerings, " as a sweet
savor," and be honored by them " before the eyes of
the nations." And there, remembering with penitent
affliction all their past misdeeds, they shall the more
gratefully acknowledge Jehovah, Avho has dealt with
them for his own name's sake, and not according to
their evil ways and corrupt doings, f
Next, Ezekiel conceives of himself as being directed
to turn his face towards " the forest of the field in the
south," and proclaim that in it Jehovah would, in the
sight of all flesh, kindle an unquenchable fire, which
* Ezek. xx. 27-29. | xx- 30-36. J xx. 37-44.
36*

426 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
should " devour every green tree and every dry tree "
within it. Then, ceasing to speak " in parables," he
declares himself in plain language to mean, that
Jehovah is " against the land of Israel," and will
draw his sword " out of its sheath against all flesh
from the south to 'the north," and with undiscrimi-
nating fury will cut off from the land " the right
eous and the wicked." To its sheath his sword
shall return no more. He who hears the mournful
sentence of the desolation it will make may well
" sigh with bitterness, and with the breaking of his
loins." *
That sword, it is repeated, " is sharpened and fur
bished " ; sharpened for slaughter, furbished that it
may dazzle. The proud staff of Israel may defy and
despise the rod of chastisement. But it will prove to
be nothing to " make mirth " of. " Given into the
hand of the slayer," " the princes of Israel," as well
as the common people, will fall before the sharp
and glittering blade, and the staff that despised it
will in the day of trial be no more seen. When it
comes " twice, yea, thrice," uplifted in its terror against
all the gates, smiting to the right and left, assailing
on every side, hearts will faint, and the ruin be com
plete, x
In the execution of this awful purpose of Jehovah,
mark the Babylonian conqueror, says Ezekiel, pursu
ing his invading march in two directions. At the
head of his hosts, he comes to a place where two roads

* Ezek. xx. 45 -xxi. 7.
f xxi. 8-17. — Inverses 10 and 13 the meaning is obscure, and the
text variously represented by the versions. — " I will  cause mine
anger to cease," Tirun (17); that is, say the commentators, by satiating it
first : but the Septuagint reads more suitably, I will send out my anger ; the
Vulgate, I will fulfil it ; the Arabic, I will kindle it.

LI-] EZEKIEL I. 1.- XXIV. 27. 427
diverge, the one towards Rabbath, the capital " of the
sons of Ammon," the other " towards Judah, to Jeru
salem, the fenced city." He stops " at the parting of
the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divina
tion." His right hand draws out the lot inscribed
" Jerusalem," indicating that it is thither he is to direct
his course. Those about him cannot believe that she
has given cause for invasion, so solemn were the oaths
of fealty she swore. But the king knows better. He
is informed of the disloyalty by which she has de
served his vengeance. And that vengeance Jehovah
designs that she shall feel. The "profane wicked
prince of Israel " must lay down his diadem, and put
off his crown. Such is the will of Him who can
exalt the lowly, and abase the high. Nor will the
other road of wasting conquest be left untrodden, but
for the sons of Ammon too, " the sword, the sword is
drawn, to slay and to consume."* To treacherous
and wicked Ammon also, Jehovah says, " In the place
where thou wast created, in the land of thy nativity, I
will judge thee, and I will pour upon thee my in
dignation, I will blow upon thee in the fire of my
wrath, and deliver thee into the hands of brutal men,
skilful to destroy. Thou shalt be fuel for the fire ;
thy blood shall be in the midst of the land; men
shall no more remember thee. I, Jehovah, have spo
ken it." t
The denunciations against Ammon appear to have
fallen into this place by a not unnatural association
of thought, though some commentators are of opinion
that they belong in the twenty-fifth chapter, and have
somehow lost their place. Resuming the theme of the
coming ruin of Jerusalem, the prophet says that, be-
* Ezek. xxi. 18-28. t xxi. 29-32.

428 EZEKIEL I. 1.— XXIV. 27. [LECT.
cause of her free shedding of blood, and making of
idols to pollute herself, she shall become " a reproach
to the nations, and a derision to all countries," and be
mocked at by the distant and the near.* Even her
princes are bloodthirsty men. " They set light by
father and mother," and oppress the stranger, the
fatherless, and the widow. In Jerusalem Jehovah's
holy ordinances are despised, and his Sabbaths pro
faned. There are malignant tale-bearers, idolatrous,
lewd, and incestuous persons, hired assassins, extor
tioners, and usurers. Weighed down by such a load
of guilt, how can the heart of Jerusalem be steadfast,
or her hands be strong in the day of Jehovah's ven
geance % He will scatter her people among the na
tions, and disperse them in foreign countries, and
make her despicable in the eyes of the world. f He
will blow upon them with the fire of his wrath, and
melt them as refiners melt the ore of silver.^
Since the land is all unclean and barren of goodness ;
since they who should instruct her in righteousness
set her the example of every iniquity ; since even her
priests " make no distinction between the holy and
profane, and show not the difference between the clean
and the unclean," and " hide their eyes from his Sab
baths " ; since even her princes, flattered by false coun
sellors, themselves " shed blood," and destroy the life
they should protect ; since, without exception, " the
people of the land are guilty of oppression, and prac
tise robbery, and distress the poor and needy," so that
not an innocent man is to be found, whose virtues
should " make a wall, and stand in the gap " to plead
for mercy, — " Therefore," saith the Lord Jehovah,
" will I pour out my indignation upon them ; I will
* Ezek. xxii. 1 - 5. txxii-6-16- J xxii. 17-22.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1.— XXIV. 27. 429
consume them with the fire of my wrath ; I will bring
their way upon their heads." *
The twenty-third chapter is a composition of similar
character to the sixteenth. With illustration very
disagreeably copious and minute, the prophet com
pares the misconduct of the two Israelitish kingdoms
to that of unfaithful wives. Aholah, by which name
the northern kingdom is called, was first betrayed,
then destroyed, by the Assyrians.")" Aholibah, that is,
Judea, should have taken warning ; but, on the con
trary, she sinned in like manner, and even more bold
ly, first with the Assyrians, then with the Chaldeans.J
Aholibah, therefore, should also meet her ruin at the
hands of her lovers. Against her Jehovah Avould
bring up in arms, " on every side, the Babylonians and
all the Chaldeans, prefects, rich men, and nobles, and
all the Assyrians with them." He would " commit to
them judgment," and they should punish her "accord
ing to their punishments." They should strip her,
and mutilate her, and take away her sons and daugh
ters. She had imitated her sister's guilt ; she should
share her sister's doom.^ It was the prophet's busi
ness to explain that the downfall and misery of both
was Jehovah's righteous visitation for their sins. It
was for their shameless infidelity that he brought a
great company against them, and gave them up to be
harassed and spoiled, and stoned with stones, and cut

* Ezek. xxii. 23-31.
\ xxiii. 1-10. — "Aholah  and Aholibah" (4); her tent, or
tabernacle; and, my tabernacle is in her
X xxiii. 11-21. — " She saw men portrayed upon the wall," &c. (14,
15) ; a description minutely corresponding with, and illustrating, the monu
ments discovered by Layard at Nimroud and Khorsabad. See " Nineveh
and its Remains," Vol. II. p. 239 et seq.
6 xxiii. 22-35.

430 EZEKIEL L 1.— XXIV. 27. [LECT.
in pieces with the sword, and made childless and
houseless.* That which Ezekiel had been long expecting at last
takes place. The incensed king of Babylon moves
against the insurgent city of his fathers with an
overwhelming force ; and seeing its inevitable doom
so close at hand, he utters one more warning and wail
before its fall. The great caldron, he says, is now
to be filled and set on the fire, for the flesh and bones
of the great sacrifice of Jehovah's indignation to be
seethed in it.f " The city of blood " is a blood-defiled
and rusty caldron. The blood Jerusalem has shed
lies in view where it was -spilt, uncovered and un-
absorbed by the earth. " Woe to the city of blood,"
the blood-rusted caldron. " Heap on wood, kindle
the fire, cook the flesh, put in spices, and let the
bones be burned ; then set it empty upon the coals,
that its brass may be hot and may burn, and that
* Ezek. xxiii. 36-49. — In 43-45 the ruin of the southern kingdom is
described in connection, and in the same terms, with that of the northern,
which was certainly a long past event.
j- xxiv. 1-5. — " The word of Jehovah came to me in the ninth year,
in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, and said, Son of
man, write the name of the day, even of this same day ! The king of
Babylon draweth near to Jerusalem this same day " (1,2); comp. 2 Kings
xxv. 1 ; Jer. xxxix. 1 ; Iii. 4. There is no statement here such as to in
dicate that Ezekiel on a certain day, at three or four hundred miles' distance
from Jerusalem, knew what was passing there, though perhaps the passage
is often so understood, and our translators have done something to favor the
idea. The history does not tell us that on that day Nebuchadnezzar ar
rived before Jerusalem, came to it, — which is what the argument demands.
hy N| are the words ; literally, he went against ; words which do not so
easily denote that he reached the city on that day, as that he was approach
ing it on his march, or that he started on his expedition towards it, either of
which latter would be facts that every person near Babylon might know
without extraordinary means of information. by_ does not strictly mean to,
but near, towards, or against. It is very doubtful whether "TOD, the verb in
Ezek. xxiv. 2, signifies so much as approach, or movement towards. The
primitive meaning is he imposed, or upheld, and its use here, as an intransi
tive, is peculiar.

LL] EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. 431
its impurity may be dissolved in it, and its rust
be consumed." Jehovah, who would have cleansed
it, but it refused, — whom it has wearied till he can
bear no longer, — Jehovah has spoken it, and it will
come to pass ; he will not go back, nor repent, nor
spare.* On the evening of a day when he had been speaking
of these national calamities to his fellow-exiles, death
invaded his oavu dwelling. Jehovah took away from
him the partner of his life, "the desire of his eyes, with
one blow." But he seemed to hear Jehovah say,- that
such a time of public sorrow was no time for a patri
otic man to give way to any private grief. So he did
not weep nor fast, but went out in the morning with
head-dress and shoes, and without any thing of the
garb of mourning.f And when the people asked him
why he did so, he replied, that they, in the public ca
lamity, should acknowledge the sovereignty and jus
tice of Jehovah as he did in his private grief, by re
fraining from all outward signs of lamentation. Jeho
vah's sanctuary in his holy city, the pride of their
nation's confidence, the desire of their eyes, the long
ing of their souls, was doomed to be trampled on by
the feet of savage conquerors, and the sons and daugh
ters of Israel to fall in thousands by the SAVord. Yet
they were not to "mourn nor weep," but only to
" pine away for their iniquities, and moan one to
another." J By and by messengers would come from
the host, bringing tidings of that destruction at Jeru
salem, which, as it seemed, could not much longer be
delayed. Till then, at least, let them observe the
prophet's exhortation, and give no signs of sorrow.
* Ezek. xxiv. 6-14. t xxiv- 15 " 17-
X xxiv. 18-24. — The Septuagint version has no mention of the death
of the prophet's wife.

432 EZEKIEL I. 1. — XXIV. 27. [LECT.
" In that day " his mouth would be opened again, with
such further counsels as the time might prove to call
for.* This is the last reference to Jerusalem by Ezekiel
before its fall by the Babylonian arms.
X Ezek. xxiv. 25 - 27. — One cannot but conjecture the particular pur
pose of Ezekiel in this passage to have been, to quiet the agitation of his
fellow-exiles on seeing an army move from their neighbourhood against the
city of their fathers, and prevent their bringing trouble on themselves by- a
mutinous outbreak.

LIL] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. 433

LECTURE LIL
EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35.
Denunciations against the Ammonites, the Moaeites, the Edom
ites, and the Philistines. — Threatened Ruin of Tyre, with
Descriptions of its Ancient Greatness. — Conquest of Egypt
and its Auxiliary Nations, and its Desolation for Forty Years.
— The same Subject pursued in Three Peculiarly Ornate Com
positions. — Responsibility of Watchmen, and of those whom
they warn. — Doctrine of Pardon to the Penitent, and Retri
bution to the Backsliding. — Intelligence of the Capture of Je
rusalem. — Reflections and Lamentations of the Prophet, and
Forebodings of Further Disaster. — Rebuke of Unfaithful Shep
herds, and Augury of the Future Shepherd of David's Line
and Name. — Repetition of Imprecations against Idumea. — Re
sumption of the Subject of the Future Prosperity of Israel. —
The same Idea, under the Figurative Representations of Dry
Bones revivified, and of Two Staves united. — Plot and Over
throw of Gog and Magog. — Detailed Description, in the Form
of a Vision, of the Condition of the Restored Jewish People.
— Bearing of the Passage on the Principles of Interpretation
of the Prophetical Writings. — Future Arrangements of the
Temple and Ritual. — Position of the Capital City. — Estates
of the Monarch, the Priests, and the Levites. — Boundaries of
the Tribes. — Character of Ezekiel's Writings. — No Quotations
from them in the New Testament. — Supposed Predictions of
Jesus. The denunciations in the twenty-fifth chapter of
Ezekiel are of similar tenor to what occur in the pre
vious portion of the book, and are addressed to the
Ammonites and Moabites, the Edomites and the Phi
listines, nations dwelling respectively on the eastern,
the southern, and the western border of the Holy Land.
They have all, says the prophet, insulted or injured
vol. iii. 37

434 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
unhappy Judah, and all shall themselves feel the woes
which have fallen upon her. He saw the Babylonish
conqueror pursuing his conquests over all the neigh
bouring region; and as those conquests successively
occurred, or as they appeared to be approaching, he
interpreted them, in the series of poems which begins
here, as tokens of the displeasure of the God of
Israel. The Ammonites had scoffed against Jehovah's sanc
tuary, " when it was profaned, and against the land of
Israel, when it was desolate, and against the house of
Judah, when they went into captivity." Jehovah, who
had punished Israel, would punish them too, and by
the same instruments. The same Eastern hosts which
had laid Jerusalem low would " make Eabbah a stable
for camels, and the land of the Ammonites a couching-
place for flocks." Because they had spitefully exulted
over the humiliation of Israel, therefore they too should
be despoiled and extirpated.*
The Moabites and Edomites would in the same man
ner expiate the same offence. Judgment would be ex
ecuted on Moab, and its cities given for a possession to
" the sons of the East." "f Edom had furnished suc
cours to the invading army, and dealt vindictively with
the race of Judah. Therefore man and beast would
be cut off from it. Desolation and the sword would
ravage it. Jehovah's vengeance would be wreaked
upon it " by the hand of his people Israel," when the
time should come for his people to be recalled to
their ancient seat, and restored to their ancient great
ness. J The Philistines, who, in the day of Israel's
affliction, had fed their ancient grudge, should be
visited with signal vengeance from Jehovah, and
* Ezek. xxv. 1-7. f xxv- 8- 11. J xxv. 12-14.

LIL] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. 435
suffer the destruction of their " remnant upon the
sea-coasts." *
The next two chapters, with the greater part of a
third, are occupied with forebodings of the destined
ruin of the great Phoenician city, Tyre. It had shown
no sympathy with the distresses of Jerusalem in the
Babylonish invasion. The prophet saw the over
whelming force of Nebuchadnezzar now moving
against it, or at least saw that it fell within the range
of that monarch's destined conquests. With a patriot's
indignant feelings he exulted in its coming doom, and,
with all the fulness of poetical amplification he could
command, he painted its future desolation. " Because
Tyre had said against Jerusalem, ' Aha ! she is broken,
that was the gate of the nations ; now is all transferred
to me ; I shall be full, now that she is desolate ! ' "
therefore it was Jehovah's purpose that she should be
spoiled and dispeopled, and that, as the waves of the
Mediterranean broke upon her own island towers, so
many nations should come up against her, and over
throw her walls, and reduce her again to the naked
rock on which her commercial magnificence had been
reared, and make her what she had been of old, a
lonely spot visited by the fisherman's skiff, " a place
for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea."|

* Ezek. xxv. 15 - 17.
f xxvi. 1-6. Writers of the class of Bishop Newton (see "Disserta
tions on the Prophecies," Diss. XI.) think they have done something towards
proving the possession of supernatural foreknowledge by a writer, when they
find that language of this sort used by him corresponds with the now exist
ing state of things as described by modern travellers. But if the imagina
tion of a poet was to run into any detail in the description of what a place
would be after the arms of a conqueror had driven away its people, and de
molished its monuments of art and civilization, how could it fail to be guid
ed, as to the particulars of that description, by the original and natural fea
tures of the site? At the place where now stood opulent and gorgeous
Tyre, Nature had made only a bleak, sea-beaten, rocky island. Fishermen

436 EZEKIEL XXV. 1.- XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
Nebuchadnezzar was coming against her, " with hor
ses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and a vast
multitude of people." Her daughters he would slay ;
he would assail her with all the machinery of war, and
break down her towers with axes. The dust of his
columns of horsemen should cover her ; the sound of
the movement of his chariots should shake her walls.
They should roll through her streets, slaying her peo
ple, and prostrating her idols. They should plunder
her wealth, level her palaces with the ground, and
tumble their shattered materials into the sea ; and the
strains of her festive music should be no more heard
again for ever.*
Continuing this strain, certainly not of literal pre
diction, but of highly colored imaginative poetry, the
prophet says that the other islands will shake at the
sound of the fall of Tyre, "and all the princes of
the sea come down from their thrones, and lay aside
their mantles, and put off their embroidered garments,"
and " clothe themselves with trembling, and sit on the
ground," and utter a lamentation over her fallen great-
ness.f And when the great waters have been made to
cover her, she shall be brought down " to them that
have gone down to the pit, to the people of old time,"
first frequented it, and then traffickers, whose enterprise had built up a splen
did city. To say that they would be expelled from it, neither to return
themselves, nor be succeeded by other inhabitants, was but to say, in other
words, that the elements would take possession of it again, and in time re
store precisely those features of primitive desolation which laborious art had
effaced. So Lord Byron, looking forward to the fate of Venice, imagines
it reduced to the same condition in which the ancestors of the Foscari and
Dandoli found it, when, fugitives from the havoc going on in central Italy,
they sought a refuge and a living among its channels and sand-banks : —
" Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose."
Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza xiii.
* Ezek. xxvi. 7-14. f xxvi- 15 - 18.

LIL] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. 437
and be no more inhabited, nor so much as a trace of
her be found by the seeker.*
Then follows a highly-wrought description of the
opulence and splendor of Tyre, which, dwelling " at
the entrance of the sea, the merchant of the nations
to many coasts," might claim to be the perfection of
beauty. All nations, near and distant, ministered to
the activity of her commerce, and the affluence of
her wealth. Her fleets were framed and rigged with
the products of foreign forests and looms ; they were
built and manned by foreign artisans and mariners.f
Her soldiers were enlisted from the warlike tribes
beyond the Euphrates, from the Mediterranean islands,
from Asia Minor, and from Africa.^ Her market col
lected the traffickers in all salable things, from all
accessible places. The metals, precious and useful,
came to her from Tarshish ; slaves and brazen utensils
from Ionia and Thrace ; horses and mules from Cappa-
docia ; ivory and ebony from the Persian Gulf; precious
stones, linen fabrics, embroidery, wine, and wool from
Syria; wheat, oil, balm, and other provisions, from
Judea; and thread, wrought iron, cloths, sheep and
goats, spices, shawls, and various commodities, from di
vers other places. By the " ships of Tarshish," which
brought them into her harbour, was she " made very
glorious in the midst of the seas." §
But the day of her pride was over. Her rowers
had brought her " into great waters," and the stormy
ocean-winds were to make her a helpless wreck. Her
wealth, and her seamen, and her merchants, and her
warriors, and all her multitude of inhabitants, were
to " fall into the midst of the seas in the day of her
ruin." The pilots and mariners would leave their
» Ezek. xxvi. 19-21. t xxvii- 1_9-
X xxvii. 10, 11. § xxvii. 12-25.
37*

438 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
ships, and on the shore " cast dust upon their heads,
and roll themselves in ashes," " and gird themselves
with sackcloth," and break out into such a bitter cry as
to make the pastures shake around, lamenting over
Tyre, as the city to which formerly none was like,
providing for many nations, enriching the kings of the
earth, now " broken by the seas in the depth of the
waters," and made a desolation, and doomed to " exist
no more for ever." *
The subject is still further dwelt upon, though with
different imagery. The pride of " the prince of Tyre "
had provoked the displeasure of Jehovah. Because
his heart was lifted up, and he had said, " I am a god,
I sit in the seat of a god, in the midst of the seas,"
and pretended to be wiser, than Daniel, and to be able
to penetrate all secrets by that wisdom which had
amassed his stores of wealth, therefore the sentence
of Jehovah had gone out against him, that strangers
should come against him, " the terrible of the na
tions," and bring him down to the pit, and slay him
" in the midst of the seas." f It was fit that a lamen
tation should be made over him, proclaiming that once
he was " a finished signet, full of wisdom, and perfect
in beauty," dwelling " in Eden, the garden of God,"
and blazing with his covering of jewels all over, as
he moved. And so he had prospered from the first,
till that iniquity was found in him, which doomed him
to be cast out " as profane out of the mountain of
God." His heart was lifted up because of his splen
dor ; therefore he should be cast upon the ground, to
be a gazing-stock to other kings. Jehovah would con
sume him to ashes, so that he should exist no more
for ever. J
* Ezek. xxvii. 26-36. j xxviii. 1-10.
X xxviii. 11-19. Viewed as prediction, this diatribe against Tyre

LII0 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. 439
The remainder of the chapter is devoted to a brief
denunciation of the overthrow, at some undefined
time, of the neighbouring Phoenician city, Sidon. Je
hovah was incensed against her, and would " execute
judgments in her," and "send upon her pestilence,
and blood into her streets." Sidon, like all the enemies
of the house of Israel, should be brought to nothing,
so that Jehovah's people should no longer feel "a
grieving thorn of all that are round about them."
Them Jehovah designed to gather " from the nations
among which they were scattered," and cause them
to dwell again in permanent security in the land
which he had given to his servant Jacob, when he
should " have executed judgments on all that despised
them round about." * Such a happy result for Israel
of those conquests by which the Babylonian monarch
was breaking the power of her foes, was, it seems,
what Ezekiel expected or hoped ; but whether predic
tion, expectation, or hope, the event did not fulfil it.
The next four chapters deal with Egypt as the last
three have done with Tyre, and in like manner the
imagery employed in the denunciations against that
kingdom is appropriate to its natural features. Egypt,
the broad valley of the Nile, is called a " great dragon,"
lying in the midst of its rivers, and saying, " My river
is my own, and I have made it for myself." Jehovah
will put hooks in its jaws, and drag it from the water
with the fish hanging to its scales, and cast it into the
desert, and give it for food " to the beasts of the field
and the birds of heaven." This was because Egypt
had been " a staff of reed to the house of Israel."

and its prince was probably falsified by the event. Probably Nebuchad
nezzar never took Tyre. See above, p. 217. Also comp. Josephus, "Cont.
Ap.," Lib. I. § 21, where his silence is as significant as in the passage be
fore referred to.
* Ezek. xxviii. 20-26.

440 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
When they would have taken hold of it, they had
found it only a weapon to wound and pierce.* In
plainer words, Jehovah would bring armed invaders
upon Egypt, and destroy its inhabitants and their
beasts, and make it desolate and waste. For forty
years it should continue uninhabited, nor should so
much as any foot of man or of beast pass through it.
Its inhabitants should be " scattered among the na
tions, and dispersed through the countries."")" At the
end of the forty years' dispersion they should be gath
ered back " into the land of Pathros, into the land of
their origin." There they should be " a mean king
dom," " the meanest of all kingdoms," " no more ruling
over the nations," "no more the confidence of the
house of Israel." X
Is this prediction1? When and how was it ful
filled1? Who can point out the forty years during
which Egypt lay untrodden by the foot of man and
beast "? When, whither, by what conqueror, were the
Egyptians carried away into captivity % when and by
whom were they led back from their exile1? Has
Egypt never more exalted itself above the nations'?
Was it this " meanest of all kingdoms " under the
dynasty of the Ptolemies 1 Is it so in our own day 1
* Ezek. xxix. 1-7. — "In the tenth year," &c. (1) ; Josephus ("An
tiq. Jud.," Lib. X. cap. 9, § 7) places the expedition of Nebuchadnezzar,
in the course of which he overran Egypt, in the twenty-third year of
that prince's reign, which nearly corresponds with the seventeenth year
of the captivity of Jehoiachin. Accordingly, if, as is probable (comp.
i. 1), by " the tenth year" in our text, the writer meant the tenth year
after that event, there was a space of seven years between the date of
the writing and the conquest of Egypt. But during all those seven years,
and longer, the event had been highly probable, for the Egyptian arms had
been constantly worsted before the rising greatness of Babylon (comp.
2 Kings xxiv. 7). This being so, I do not care to urge, what, however, is
not at all incredible, that the piece may have been written after the conquest
which it describes, and dated as it is, with no purpose whatever to deceive,
but merely as part of the poetical embodiment of the author's thought.
t xxix. 8-12. X xxix- 13-16.

LIIJ EZEKIEL XXV. 1.- XLVIII. 35. 44J
Has it been " no more the confidence of the house of
Israel " 1 Did it ever have more of their confidence
than in the third century after Ezekiel] *
The truth is, the passage will bear no examination,
on the hypothesis of its being designed as supernatu
ral prediction. It is the denunciation of a patriot
against the enemies of his country, taking its tone
from the signs of the times, and its form from the
usages of poetry. The language is similar, and of
similar import, to what Jeremiah had addressed to the
Jews. Forty, as well as seventy, in Hebrew use, stands
for a considerable indefinite number. As Jeremiah
had said that the Jews, for their sins, would suffer
a captivity of seventy years,f so Ezekiel says that the
Egyptians, for a like reason, shall go into exile forty
years, and then be restored. No such thing ever took
place with the Egyptians. Ezekiel never expected to
be understood as saying literally that it would. No
more did Jeremiah expect to be understood as literally
declaring that the Jews would be captives and exiles
seventy years. It is the dulness of his commentators
that has raised the question implicating his good credit.
It was, according to the text, seventeen years later
than the date of this last composition X that Ezekiel
found himself moved to say that, since Nebuchadnez
zar had not been compensated by any plunder of Tyre
for his trouble and loss in the siege of that city, in
which transaction he had wrought for Jehovah, there
fore the land of Egypt was to be given him " for his
wages for his service." Then would the prosperity of
the people of Israel too return, and Ezekiel, as one of
them, would not be afraid to speak.§

* See above, pp. 164, 165. f See above, p. 341 et seq.
X That is, ten years after Nebuchadnezzar's Egyptian expedition ; see
last page, note *.
§ Ezek. xxix. 17-21.

442 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
Again the prophet found himself moved to say that
the day of ruin for Egypt and for its confederate pow
ers was near at hand. Ethiopia, Lybia, Lydia, and
others of her dependencies, should fall with her be
neath the Chaldean's conquering sword. The idols
and images of Egypt should be cast down; there
should be " no more a prince of the land " ; the whole
country should be ravaged with fire and sword ; and
the women, the only survivors, should be carried into
captivity. *
At another time, sixteen years earlier than the last
date, Ezekiel urged the same topic of the destined de
vastation of Egypt. Jehovah, he says, had broken
one of the arms of Pharaoh, and intended to break
the other, so that he would have to drop his sword ;
and then he would put a weapon into the hand of the
king of Babylon, and break Pharaoh's arms, so that
they would fall by his side, and he would " groan
with the groanings of a deadly wounded man." And
Jehovah's sword in the hand of the king of Babylon
would be stretched out over the Egyptians, and they
would be " scattered among the nations, and dis
persed among the countries." f
The same approaching devastation of Egypt is the
theme of three following compositions, of peculiarly
ornate character and artificial structure. The fate of
Assyria, says the prophet, shall be repeated for Egypt.
" Assyria was a cedar upon Lebanon, with fair branch
es." Watered by plentiful streams, it grew to a tow
ering height. " In his boughs all the birds of heaven
made their nests, and under his branches all the beasts
of the field brought forth their young, and under his
shadow dwelt all the great nations." " Not any tree
* Ezek. xxx. 1-19. f xxx- 20 - 26.

LU] EZEKIEL XXV. 1.- XLVIII. 35. 443
in the garden of God was like to him in bis beauty." *
But the Assyrian's " heart Avas lifted up on account of
his height." And because of his arrogance, Jehovah
delivered him into the hands of furious enemies, and
" his branches fell, and his boughs were broken, in all
the valleys of the land." His fate was meant for a
warning to other presumptuous nations ; —
" To the end that none of all the trees by the waters
Might exalt themselves for their stature,
Nor shoot up their top among the thick boughs,
And that none of the trees that drink water should cleave to them on ac
count of their height." — xxxi. 14.
The fall of Assyria had caused a great and grievous
mourning, though other fallen nations " were com
forted " when they saw that even her grandeur did not
exempt her from a fate like their own. And as proud
Assyria had fallen, so proud Egypt was doomed to
fall. " Pharaoh and all his multitude " should be
made to " lie down in the midst of the uncircumcised,
with them that are slain by the sword." "j"
Again, in a composition dated nearly two years after
the last, Egypt is addressed as " a young lion among
the nations, a dragon in the seas," that had troubled
other waters with its feet, and made turbid the rivers
not its own. But Jehovah would throw over it a net,
in which other nations should seize and take it. It
should be thrown out upon the open field ; its flesh
should be spread upon the mountains, and the valleys
be filled with its refuse.
" And I will water the land in which thou swimmest with thy blood, even
to the mountains,
And the streams shall be full of thee.
And I will cover the heavens when I quench thee, «
* Ezek. xxxi. 1-9.
f xxxi. 10-18. — "In the midst of the uncircumcised" (18); that is,
like the rest of the heathen, on whom Jehovah had taken vengeance.

444 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
And make the stars thereof dark ;
I will cover the sun with a cloud,
And the moon shall not give her light.
All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee,
And bring darkness upon thy land,
Saith the Lord Jehovah." — xxxii. 6-8.
Its destruction should be so terrible as to strike many
nations with amazement, and cause their kings to
shudder and tremble, " every one for his own life." *
For " the sword of the king of Babylon " should come
upon Egypt, and cut off its multitudes, and bring its
pride to. nothing, and make all the region tenantless,
desolate, and silent. And then should this lamenta
tion of the prophet " for Egypt and for all her multi
tude " be repeated by all " the daughters of the na
tions." f
Once more the doom of Egypt is announced, in a
poem of very elaborate composition, particularly in
respect to the following refrain, which, now in an
abridged, now in an amplified form, is repeated
throughout the piece : —
" There is Assyria and all her company ;
Her graves are round about her ;
All of them are slain, fallen by the sword ;
Her grave is made in the depths of the pit,
And her company is round about her grave,
All of them slain, fallen by the sword,
They who caused terror in the land of the living." — xxxii. 22, 23.
Egypt, mighty and glorious as she was, must be cast
down " to the lower parts of the earth, to them that
have gone down to the pit." As " Assyria and all her
company " had fallen before, as " Elam and all her
company," as " Meshech, Tubal, and all their multi
tude," which in their time had " caused terror in the
land of the living," as " Edom, her kings and all her
princes," as " the princes of the North, and all the
* Ezek. xxxii. 1-10. | xxxii. 11-16.

I'll.] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. -XLVIII. 35. 445
Sidonians," had successively been made to share the
shame of " them that have gone down to the pit," so
" Pharaoh and all his multitude " would be made to
yield another triumph to the arms of resistless Baby
lon.* The simple and weighty ethical wisdom of the first
part of the thirty-third chapter is in a similar strain
to that in the eighteenth. Musing on his duty as a
faithful teacher of the people, Ezekiel represents him
self as being warned by Jehovah that the responsibil
ity of the watchman is discharged then, and then only,
when he has duly raised his voice in admonition. If,
when Jehovah is in his providence threatening a na
tion with calamity, he whom they have " set for their
watchman " " bloweth the trumpet and warneth the
people," while the attentive hearer shall escape, whoso
ever meets his fate through inattention to the warn
ing, " his blood shall be upon his own head." But if
the watchman be silent when he sees evil approaching,
and the people perish unwarned, the Avatchman shall
be reckoned guilty of their blood, and it shall be
required at his hand.f So Ezekiel was, as it were,
Jehovah's watchman to give warning to the house of
Israel. And if he failed to admonish them of judg
ments which Jehovah had in store for their sins, he
should be held answerable for the sufferers' fate ; if he
gave timely admonition, he should clear himself from
accountability, f
As the people's watchman and reprover, he under
stood himself also to be instructed to say to them, that
they had no occasion to despond, when the judgments
of Jehovah were threatened, as if he had " pleasure in
* Ezek. xxxii. 17-32. Comp. Is. xiv., of which this poem is in some
sort an imitation. i
f xxxiii. 1-6. t xxxiii. 7—9.
vol. iii. 38

446 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
the death of the wicked." On the contrary, he desired
their repentance, and was always ready to stay the
uplifted arm of his displeasure. As a course of good
ness, when forsaken, would no longer protect the
backslider, so neither should the repentant sinner con
tinue to endure the consequences of vice lamented and
abandoned. The presumptuous righteous man, falling
into evil courses, would be treated as the wrong-doer
he had become, not as the servant of God that he had
been ; while to the transgressor convinced of the error
of his ways, and turning to walk " in the statutes of
life," none of the sins which he had committed should
be mentioned. The perverse people might complain
of the course of Jehovah's justice. But these were its
right and holy principles, and agreeably to these it
would continue to be administered.*
" In the twelfth year of the captivity, in the tenth
month, on the fifth day of the month," a person who
had escaped from Jerusalem came to Ezekiel, " saying,
' The city is smitten.' " This cannot be understood as
the prophet's first intelligence of that event, for the
event had taken place a year and a half before.! But
the sight of one who had been a witness and a sharer
of that great catastrophe, and who probably had many
particulars concerning it to communicate, naturally
affected him with strong emotion. The evening be
fore this interview, he had been engaged in medita
tions on the judgments of Jehovah and the perversity
of his people, which broke out into impassioned ex
pression when the fugitive from Jerusalem presented
himself.^ He bemoaned the arrogant folly of those

* Ezek. xxxiii. 10-20. -f Comp. 2 Kings xxv. 2-4.
X xxxiii. 21, 22 ; comp. xxiv. 27. The prophet seems to say, that
what he had spoken of in poetical language on a former occasion appeared
now literally to occur.

LII-1 EZEKEL XXV. 1.- XLVIII. 35. 447
who imagined that, because to their father Abraham
Jehovah had given the country in which hitherto his
posterity had dwelt, therefore it must remain their in
alienable inheritance; and in sorrowful indignation
he cried out against them that they had forfeited it by
their idolatrous impieties, and their violent and licen
tious lives. The worst for them had not even yet
come. Jehovah would demonstrate to them in yet
more awful visitations the power and justice they had
defied. The sword, wild beasts, and pestilential dis
ease should sweep away the wretched remnant that
the Chaldean sword had spared, and " make the land
an utter desolation." * When these times came, the
thoughtless people would pay more heed to the proph
et's words. At present, they deemed but lightly of his
warnings. They would indeed come and listen to
him, and invite their friends to do the same. But his
speech was no more to them than " a very lovely song
of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well
on an instrument." When the disasters he foreboded
came, they might hold his prescience in higher re
gard^ The shepherds of the flock, continues the prophet,
the rulers and teachers of the people, were in fault for
the people's sins. Instead of providing for their charge,
they were provident only for themselves. They did
not strengthen the weak, nor cure the sick, nor bind
up the Avounded, nor search for the lost; and the
flock, by reason of their unfaithfulness, wandered un
provided, exposed, and uncared for. J Jehovah's ven
geance should overtake the shepherds. He would
dismiss them from the charge they had neglected and
abused, and himself assume the guardianship of his
* Ezek. xxxiii. 23-29. f xxxiii. 30-33. J xxxiv. 1-6.

448 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
sheep. He "will bring them out from the nations,
and gather them from the countries, and bring them
to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains
of Israel, in the valleys, and; in all the dwelling-places;
of the land." " In a good pasture, and upon the high
mountains of Israel, shall their fold be ; there shall
they lie down in a good fold, and in a fat pasture
shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel." Search
shall be made after the straying ; the wounded shall,
be dressed, and the sick tended ; but the fat and
strong shall be set aside for slaughter. Jehovah " will
judge between the weak of the flock and the strong
ones," who, not content with devouring the good pas
ture, tread down the residue with their feet, and foul.
the rivers out of which their companions would drink,
and push the weak with their sides, their shoulders,
and their horns.* And over his flock Jehovah will.
place a shepherd, even his servant David. He will
rid their land of noxious animals, so that they may
sleep safely in the woods. He will fertilize it with
copious showers, so that " the earth shall yield her
increase." He will deliver them from the yoke of op
pressors, from the terror of foes, and from the misery
of hunger ; and they shall know that they are Jeho
vah's chosen people, and that Jehovah is their gracious
God.f The thirty-fifth chapter seems to have lost its place.
It intervenes between two passages closely connected
in subject, and it appears to belong to the series of
maledictions against nations hostile to Judea, which
extends through eight chapters, beginning with the
twenty-fifth. It is, indeed, but an expansion of the
three verses in the twenty-fifth chapter, except that it
* Ezek. xxxiv. 7-22. ¦)¦ xxxiv. 23-31.

LIL] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. 449
would appear that, on further reflection and considera
tion of the signs of the times, the prophet no longer
esteemed it probable, as he had done, that the Israel
ites would be instruments of that vengeance of Jeho
vah which he regarded Idumea as having provoked.*
Because, he now says, of the " perpetual hatred " of
the Edomites towards the sons of Israel, especially
manifested " in the time of their calamity," Jehovah
would make Edom taste the cup of blood which its
own hand had filled. Its cities should be untenanted,
its valleys should be filled with the slain, and it should
be made " a perpetual desolation." f It had threat
ened to make the two Hebrew kingdoms its prey, but
Jehovah, their Divine Protector, would do to it as
it had threatened to do to his inheritance ; he would
desolate Mount Seir, and so magnify his glorious
name. X
The subject of the future prosperity of Israel is re
sumed. The vainglorious triumph of its foes shall
be short-lived. The nations that have devastated and
insulted it shall themselves sink before Jehovah's
wrath, and themselves learn the bitterness of the woes
they have inflicted.§ But Israel, under Jehovah's
favor, will renew its youth, and flourish Avith a hither
to unknown prosperity. Its cities shall again swarm
with inhabitants, and all its ruins be rebuilt, and be
reavement, reproach, and derision shall never afflict it
more. || It had suffered the righteous punishment of
its sins. Because of its violence and idolatries, its peo
ple had been dispersed in foreign captivity. Abroad,
as well as at home, their rebellions had dishonored their
Divine Benefactor.^ It was not, therefore, for any
desert of theirs that he would have compassion upon

* Comp. Ezek. xxv. 12-14. f xxxv. 1-9. X xxxv- 10~ 15-
§ xxxvi. 1-7. | xxxvi. 8-15. T[ xxxvi. 16-21.
38*

450 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
them. But out of regard to his own holy name, he
would bring them back from exile, and reestablish
them in their own country. There he would purify
and reform them. He would cure them of their way
wardness, and endue them with a new spirit of docil
ity and steadfastness. And in the land of their fathers
he would bind himself to them in close alliance, and
crown them with lasting prosperity, and feed them
with luxurious plenty, and the experience of his
bountiful goodness would make them look back upon
their past unfaithfulness with self-abasement and loath
ing.*. The surrounding nations, as they observe all
this renovated prosperity, shall be led to recognize the
mighty hand of Jehovah, and the holy flock of Israel,
while it rejoices in the beneficence, will gratefully own
the benefactor.f
Is all this supernatural prediction 1 If , so, when
was it fulfilled ? It is intelligible enough, as the nat
ural expression of the hopes of a pious Jew for the
revival of the greatness of his nation, uttered at a
period of its extreme depression. It is not intelligi
ble in the sense of a divinely revealed prospect of
future events.
The same idea of the revivification of the national
well-being is next presented in two forms of figura
tive embellishment. The prophet first imagines him
self transported to a valley, whose surface he saw
covered with bones dried in the sun. He seemed to
hear Jehovah ask him whether it was possible that
they should come to life again, and then, answering
his own question, go on to declare that he himself
would cover them with flesh and skin, and make the
breath of life heave within them.J And even so it

* Ezek. xxxvi. 22 - 32. f xxxvi. 33 - 38. J xxxvii. 1 - 6.

"!•] EZEKIEL XXV. 1.- XLVIII. 35. 451
appeared to be. He seemed to hear a voice, at Avhich,
with a sudden agitation, the bones adjusted them
selves together, and took a clothing of sinews, mus
cle, and skin. Then the breath, which, at the com
mand of Jehovah, he called for aloud, came from the
four winds, and penetrated the yet inanimate forms,
" and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly
great host." * Then Jehovah explained that those heaps
of disjointed bones denoted the people of Israel, lying
lifeless in its misery and despair ; and that the prophet
should encourage them, and awaken them to the hope
of being brought again out of their graves, and made
to breathe with a new life, and restored to their an
cient seat, there devoutly to own the might of their
Divine Protector.f
The prophet's meditations on the same prospects of
his country took another form. He seemed to hear
Jehovah bid him take two staves, write on them the
names of Judah and Ephraim, the chief tribes respec
tively of the two Israelitish kingdoms, fasten the tAvo
staves together, and then reply to any who asked the
meaning of this act, that it represented the approach
ing restoration and re-union of the northern and
southern states in one great and prosperous nation.
It was Jehovah's purpose to " take the sons of Is
rael from among the nations, and gather them from
every side, and bring them into their own land."
There, under the single rule of a prince, Jehovah's
faithful and favored servant, another David in charac
ter and good-fortune as Avell as in name, the two once
separated nations, cleansed from every defilement of
past transgression and idolatries, and reinstated in
the privileges of the violated covenant of peace, Avalk-
* Ezek. xxxvii. 7-10. t xxxvii. 11-14.

452 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
ing in Jehovah's commandments, and observing his
statutes, should dwell in abundance and security, and
enjoy Jehovah's presence among them to the end of
time.* Yet it is not to be expected that their tranquillity
will remain wholly uninvaded. The sight of their
greatness will excite their ancient oppressors to anoth
er struggle. But it will be all in vain. Jehovah, God
of hosts, the Guardian of Israel, will give the victory
to his people's arms. The powers of the North, allied
with Persia, Ethiopia, and Lybia, may set themselves
in hostile array ; they may marshal their " horses and
horsemen, all of them clothed in gorgeous apparel,
even a great multitude with bucklers and shields, all
of them handling swords"; but Jehovah will be
against them, and put his ring into their jaws."]" Let
them go up like a storm-cloud, big with ruin, against
Jehovah's people, brought back from captivity, and
dwelling in its own home in peace.J Let them medi
tate, in its immature strength, to overwhelm it with
sudden desolation, to fall on its yet unwalled villages,
" to take a spoil and to divide a prey." Let them
come for the purpose of inflicting every woe which
Jehovah had at any time threatened against his dis
obedient people.§ They shall find that he, who has
now sufficiently punished Israel, is ready to rise in
awful wrath against its enemies. In his presence
there shall be " a great shaking " of every thing that
dwells in the land of Israel, man, and beast, and bird,
and fish, and reptile, " and the mountains shall be

* Ezek. xxxvii. 15-28.
•j- xxxviii. 1-6. — Though "Gog, of the land of Magog," is called a
" prince," I think the name is used, by a well-known form of generaliza
tion, to designate the military force of the unexplored northern country.
{ xxxviii. 7-9. § xxxviii. 10-17.

LIIJ EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. 453
thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and
every Avail shall fall to the ground." And through
out all his mountains Jehovah " will call for a sword "
against the heathen invader, and "contend against him
with pestilence and with blood, and rain upon him
and his hosts, and the many nations that are with him,
overflowing showers, and great hail- stones, fire, and
brimstone." Thus will he display his majesty and
glory " before the eyes of many nations." *
Nor will he be content with bringing to nothing
the designs of the insolent foes of his people. Dis
armed and helpless, he will cause them to " fall upon
the mountains of Israel," and give their carcasses " to
the ravenous birds of every wing, and to the beasts
of the forest." His vengeance will pursue them to
their own homes. For the honor of his holy name, he
" will send a fire upon Magog, and upon them that:
dwell in security in the sea-coasts." The children of
Israel shall no longer need fuel from the forests. For
seven years' time they shall feed their household fires
with the weapons of their routed invaders.")" Those
formidable hordes shall find their grave in Israel, so
vast that " it shall stop the way of passengers " to the
sea-coast, — so vast that, with the labor of " all the peo
ple of the land," " with the aid of those that pass by,"
" seven months shall the house of Israel be burying
them, that they may cleanse the land." " At the end of
the seven months shall they search" to make sure that
they have thoroughly rid it of the profanation of hea
then remains, and it shall be the duty of every way-

* Ezek. xxxviii. 18-23.
f xxxix. 1-10. — " They shall make fires of them seven years " (9) ;
if the seventy years of captivity in Babylon must be interpreted literally,
why not just as much these seven years of the burning, of Gog's weap
ons? Comp. also the " seven months " in vv. 12, 14.

454 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
farer who sees a human bone to " set up a sign by it,
till the buriers have buried it " in the city of the dead
named " Multitude." * Jehovah will invite " the birds
of every wing, and every beast of the field," to " a great
sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel," where they
may gorge themselves till they be full and drunken
with " the flesh of the mighty, and the blood of the
princes of the earth," " with horses and riders, and
mighty men and warriors of all kinds." f Thus Je
hovah will at once confirm to his people the immuta-.
bility of his purpose, and manifest his glory to the sur
rounding nations, who shall see that " the house of Is
rael were carried into captivity," not because he was
incompetent to protect them against every foe, but be
cause it was his own will that they should be punished
for their transgressions against him.:): That punish
ment once administered, and having produced its prop
er consequence in making them "feel their shame,"
his ancient covenant of peace with them is thence
forward renewed. They are now to " dwell in security
in their own land," undisturbed by any note of hostile
preparation. Alike in the chastisement which is now
past, and in the perfect prosperity which is to endure
for ever, Jehovah will be recognized as their ever-
watchful friend. He has poured out his spirit upon
them, and never more will he hide his face.§
The concluding portion of the book, consisting of
nine chapters, is of the utmost importance in its bear
ing upon the principles of interpretation of the writ
ings of the Later Prophets. In its description of the
future restored and prosperous condition of the Jew
ish people, it specifies with copious detail the structure
of the renewed temple, the offices of the reinstated
* Ezek. xxxix. 11-16. f xxxix- 17-20.
X xxxix. 21 -24. § xxxix. 25 - 29.

L"] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. -XLVIII. 35. 455
priesthood, the division of the territory of Palestine
among the tAvelve tribes, and various other arrange
ments of Church and State. To say the least, there
is not among the writings of the Later Prophets a
passage which bears more upon its face the appearance
of having been intended for precise prediction. Yet
Ave perfectly well know that, if intended for prediction,
it never Avas fulfilled. Nor have we the resource of
saying, that it remains to be fulfilled hereafter. Ten,
at least, of those tribes to which it relates, lost ages
ago their distinct existence, and the future fulfilment
of the prediction (if it were such), so far as it relates
to them, has ceased to be possible.*
Fourteen years after the destruction of the city,
Ezekiel, having been then twenty-five years a captive
in Chaldea, describes himself as having been conveyed
in vision to a high mountain in Judea, where reve
lations were made to him respecting the future reestab
lishment of his nation. There appeared to him first
" a man, whose appearance was as the appearance of
brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring-
reed." The man, having told him to attend to what
should be shown him, and declare it to the house of
Israel,")" proceeded to take measurements, in his sight,
for the construction of the future temple, and to exhib
it to him its plan, arrangements, furniture, and decora-
* Archbishop Seeker, of course without wishing to sustain the view
which I believe correct, argues that the language of Ezekiel expressly refers
to no distant future, but to a time presently succeeding his own ; that the
population which in his view was to resettle the land of Israel consisted
of the persons of that age, who had been carried away from it into captivity
for the punishment of their idolatrous impiety. (Comp. xliii. 7 - 9 ; xliv.
6- 14 et al. h. m.) "Dissertation on Ezekiel's Vision," &c. But I am not
satisfied with his reasoning to this point, though it would directly sustain the
main view which I take. The language admits of being interpreted with
reference to the posterity of those transgressors.
f Ezek. xl. 1 - 4.

456 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
tions. It would be tedious and useless to follow the
details of this process, continued through three chap
ters. It is sufficient to say, that they give a represen
tation of the building and its environments on a plan
quite different from that of the temple which was
actually erected on the return of a portion of the peo
ple from Babylon.*
These.proceedings being finished, Ezekiel was placed
at " the gate that looketh toward the east," to see Je
hovah take possession of his chosen abode. "And,
behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the
east ; and the sound thereof was as the sound of great
waters, and the earth shone with his glory." The
appearance was like that in the vision described, in
the beginning of the book, as having been seen by
the prophet at the river Chebar. He fell upon his
face. " The glory of Jehovah " then went into the
temple through the inner gate, and filled it. The spir
it took up the prophet, and conveyed him into the
inner court, where, while a man stood by his side,
a voice from the house addressed him, saying, " Son
of man, this is the place of my throne, and the place
of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the
midst of the sons of Israel for ever " ; adding, how
ever, that this was to be on the condition, that neither
the kings nor people of Israel should pollute Jehovah's
temple by their fornication, nor by the building of the
tombs of the monarchs near to the temple walls.")"
The prophet was charged to acquaint the house of
Israel with this plan for the place of their future wor
ship, and to " write it in their sight," that so they
might " keep the whole form thereof and all the stat
utes thereof, and do them."J Then he was instructed

* Ezek. xl. 5 -xiii. 20. f xliii- 1-9- X xliii- 10-12.

LIT] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. 457
in the form and dimensions of the great altar of burnt-
offering, the ceremonies of its consecration, to last
through a week, and the permanent order of sacrifices
thereupon.* The prophet continued to receive instructions from
Jehovah's own lips. The eastern gate of the temple,
by Avhich Jehovah had entered, he Avas told, was to
remain for ever closed, except for the use of the future
monarch. " The prince, because he is prince, shall
sit in it, to eat food before Jehovah; he shall enter
through the porch of that gate, and by the same way
shall he go out."")" To various matters, " concerning
all the ordinances of the house of Jehovah, and all
the laAvs thereof," he was directed to give special at
tention, and to impress them on the minds of the peo
ple, with a stern charge to abstain for the future from
the practice of past abuses. X Not only uncircumcised
men were henceforward to be excluded from the sanc
tuary ; the Levites " who went astray after their idols
when Israel went astray" were to be degraded from
the trusts in which heretofore they had been em
ployed, to the sendee of porters and slaughterers of
victims, and other ministries of inferior dignity.§ The
priests of the race of Zadok, " that kept the charge
of the sanctuary when the sons of Israel went astray,"
Avere to preside in the sacred offices. They should
" enter the gates of the inner court," clothed in linen
vestments, with no mixture of wool, which they
should put off, and " lay in the holy rooms," Avhen
they came forth " into the outer court to the people."
They should neither shave their heads, nor wear long
hair. They should drink no wine while in attendance
on the altar. They should marry no foreigner, nor

* Ezek. xliii. 13-27. t xliv. 1-3. J xliv. 4-8. § xliv. 9- 14.
vol. iii. 39

458 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
divorced woman, nor widow, except the widow of a
priest. By example as well as precept they should
" teach the people the difference between the holy and
unholy." They should administer justice and observe
the festivals agreeably to Jehovah's statutes; they
should hallow his Sabbaths ; they should mourn for
none but the nearest relatives ; and, such mourn
ing ended, should abstain from sacred offices for a
week, and offer a sin-offering preparatory to taking
part again in the ministrations of the temple.*
They should have no landed property ; the service
of Jehovah was to be their honorable inheritance;
and the offerings of his worshippers, to the exclu
sion of all food ritually unclean, would provide their
living.")" In the division of the territory, the prophet was told
that there should in the first place be set apart " an
oblation to Jehovah, a holy portion of the land."
Within this was to be a square plat for the sanctuary,
surrounded by a space for suburbs, within which the
priests should have their dwellings, while in another
part should be accommodations for the Levites, when
in attendance on the temple. J In point of fact, the
temple, as is well knoAvn, after the captivity as well as
before, was within the city ; but according to the sup
posed revelation to Ezekiel, it should not have been
so. He was told that a space for the city, of half the
size of that for the temple,§ should be laid off " over
against the oblation of the holy portion " ; and adjoin
ing these two divisions, extending from them across
the country in a direction from east to west, should be
" portions for the prince," that, possessed of an inde-

* Ezek. xliv. 15-27. f xliv. 28-31. J xlv. 1-5.
§ Viz. of the same length, and half the breadth.

LIL] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. 459
pendent transmitted estate, he might be free from all
temptation to " oppress the people."* He was to
"remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment
and justice," and to promote fair dealings among the
people by a careful superintendence of their weights
and measures.")" And prince and people should be re
minded of their mutual obligations, and of their joint
obligations to Jehovah, by participation together in
the solemn services of the temple worship, and by va
rious offerings which they should present for them
selves and for each other.J
On the Sabbaths and on the new moons the eastern
gate of the temple area, closed at all other times,
should be open all day. There the prince should pre
sent himself while the priests offered his sacrifices,
and, surrounded by his people, " worship at the thresh
old of the gate." § The prince should withdraw by the
same way that he came in, but the people, retiring
at the same time, should take the gate opposite to that
of their respective entrances. || Whenever the prince
proposed to present a voluntary offering, the eastern
gate should be opened to do him honor. ^[ Prescribed
offerings, under the charge of the priests, should be
presented daily in the temple.** Whatever portion of
his inheritance the reigning prince should give out of
his family, should revert at the year of jubilee to the
* Ezek. xiv. 6-8. — "The possession of the city, five thousand in
breadth " &c. (6). " This rectangle contained an area of about seventeen
miles in circuit, which was more than four times the circuit of Jerusalem ;
see Josephus, " De Bel. Jud.," Lib. V. cap. 4, § 3, where that city is said
to be thirty-three stadia in circumference." Newcome, " Attempt towards
an Improved Version," &c, ad loc.
f xiv. 9-12.
+ xiv. 13-25. In not a few particulars the forms detailed here and
further on differ from those prescribed by the Law. Comp. (e. g.) Ex.
xxix. 38-42; Numb. xv. 4-12.
& xlvi. 1-7. II xlvi. 8-10. 1 xlvi. 11, 12. ** xlvi. 13-15.

460 EZEKIEL XXV. 1. — XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
royal domain. What he gave to his children should
be transmitted without limit in their line, so that no
subject should " be driven from his possession," to
provide for the descendants of the royal race.*
Then Ezekiel was brought to survey a suite of spa
cious offices in each of " the four corners of the court,"
for the various culinary operations incident to the of
ferings."]" His last view of the precincts of the tem
ple showed him copious streams gushing from beneath
the threshold of that building, and flowing towards
the east. So abundant were they, that, at the distance
of two thousand cubits from the brink, he found them
reaching to his knees, and at the distance of four
thousand they could not be forded. X The measurer
who attended him, having called his attention to their
depth, led him back to the river's edge, where he
showed him " very many trees on the one side and on
the other." The waters, his companion told him, ran
easterly, and down into the desert and into the sea,
which they entered With a healing virtue so potent,
"that every living thing that moveth, whithersoever
the river shall come, shall live, and there shall be very
many fish there." " And it shall come to pass," he
continued, " that fishers shall stand upon it ; from En-
gedi to En-eglaim shall be places to spread nets ; and
therein shall be fish according to their kinds, like the
fish of the great sea, exceeding many. But the miry
places thereof, and the marshes thereof, shall not be
healed ; they shall be appointed for salt. And by the
river, upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that
side, shall grow all trees for food, Avhose leaf shall not
fade, and whose fruit shall not fail ; every month shall
they bring forth new fruit ; because their waters issue

* Ezek. xlvi. 16-18. f xlvi. 19-24. | xlvii. 1-5.

LIL] EZEKIEL XXV. 1.- XLVIII. 35. 461
forth from the sanctuary. And their fruit shall be for
food, and their leaves for medicine." *
Lastly, Jehovah is represented as informing the
prophet respecting the distribution of the territory of
Palestine " among the twelve tribes of Israel," all of
which Avere to return from captivity, and settle together
in their ancient home ; an event which, it is needless
to repeat, never took jjlace. The boundaries of Pales
tine are defined so as to include only the country west
of the Jordan, and not, as formerly, the tract on the
eastern side of that river, occupied by the pastoral
tribes of Beuben and Gad, and the half tribe of Ma
nasseh. The tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, de
scended from the patriarch Joseph, were to have each
a full assignment of land ; and, to keep up the number
of twelve, the tribe of Levi was to have none except
what it possessed in the precincts of the temple. Dif
ferently from the ancient rule, the stranger who had
lived long enough among the Israelites to have become
father of a family was to be " as born in the country
among the sons of Israel," and land Avas to be assigned
to him " in what tribe the stranger sojourneth."
The locations of the tribes were to be entirely differ
ent from those of the earlier times. In a specified
succession from north to south, each was to occupy a
layer of country, so to speak, extending from the east
ern to the western border of the kingdom, from the
Jordan to the Mediterranean. Dan was to be the
northern frontier tribe ; then, following one after an
other toAvards the south, were to be the allotments of
Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Ephraim, Eeuben, and
* Ezek. xlvii. 6 - 12. — " They go forth into the sea " (8) ; the Dead
Sea, which lay easterly from Jerusalem, appears to be meant. — " From En-
gedi to En-eglaim" (10); places in the desert country by the Dead Sea;
comp. Josh. xv. 61, 62 ; 1 Sam. xxiv. 1 ; Is. xv. 8.
39*

462 EZEKIEL XXV. 1.— XLVIII. 35. [LECT.
Judah.* Adjacent to this last, and extending, like the
allotments of each tribe, across the whole breadth of
the country, was to be a space affording room for the
sanctuary (which was to occupy the centre) ; for the
patrimony of the priests and Levites (which latter were
to have no right to " exchange or transfer the first-
fruits of the land, for it is holy to Jehovah"); for the
city and its suburbs ; for the habitation of persons who
were to " serve the city out of all the tribes of Israel " ;
and for the royal residence, which, as well as the tem
ple, was to stand without, and apart from, the city.
The city and its suburbs were to be exact quadrangles,
the latter being much the smaller. Their dimensions,
as well as those of the other divisions of territory men
tioned in connection with them, are precisely defined,
and so much on the east and west borders of the great
division immediately south of Judah as was not ex
hausted by the several appropriations expressly men
tioned, it is said, " shall belong to the prince." X The
remaining tribes Avere to occupy the residue of the
country, arranged in the following order from north to
south; viz. Benjamin, Simeon, Issachar, Zebulon, and
Gad. The city was to have twelve gates, three towards
each of the four cardinal points, to be named after the
tribes respectively, Joseph and Levi each giving its
name to one gate.J " The name of the city, from that
day, shall be, Jehovah is there." §
In the compositions which have been transmitted to
us under the name of Ezekiel, we find specimens of

* Ezek. xlvii. 13 -xlviii. 7. f xlviii. 8-22.
X No reason is given for the arrangement of the triplets of tribes respec
tively in the names given to the gates. It is not the same as that in the four
camps in the wilderness ; comp. Vol. I. pp. 314 et seq.
§ xlviii. 23 - 35.

LIJ] EZEKIEL XXV. 1. -XLVIII. 35. 463
style so entirely different and unlike, as to make it
difficult to believe that they all proceeded from the
same author. We have passages of plain, sound, eth
ical good sense, as in the eighteenth and thirty-third
chapters. There are others, as at the close of the book,
indicating the genius of an administrative formalist.
There are yet others in a high style of poetry, as in
chapters thirty-one and thirty-two ; and others still, as
those at the beginning of the book, which appear to
be no better than mere inane rhapsody. As to these
last, however, we must not forget to make allowance
for our judging them at a disadvantage, in consequence
of the poetical forms being strange to us, and the lan
guage but imperfectly known.
Ezekiel is never once quoted by the New Testament
writers, and there is no evidence that they held his
Avritings in any consideration, except that the author
of the Apocalypse appears in a number of instances
to have borrowed his imagery.
In Hengstenberg's " Christology " several passages
of this prophet are specified as containing predictions
of the future Messiah. I will not encumber the page
with any thing more than a reference to them.* The
sober student of Scripture will easily decide whether
there is any thing in their language to indicate that
their writer possessed a particle of supernatural fore
knowledge concerning the person, mission, character,
and offices of Jesus of Nazareth.

* Viz. Ezek. xi. 17 et seq.; xvii. 22-24; xxiv. 22-30; xxxxvi. 25 et
seq.; xxxvii. 21-28; xl. -xlviii.

464 JONAH. [LECT.

LECTURE LIII.
JONAH, HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, AND MALACHI.
Jonah an Historical Character. — Idioms and Date of the Book
called by his name. — difficulty of interpreting it as hls-
torv. — Outline of the Narration. — Inappropriate Prayer,
consisting of Sentences from the Psalms. — Fictitious Narra
tive among the Jews. — Nature of the Parable. — Intended
Moral of the Story of Jonah. — Reference to it in a Discourse
of Jesus. — Not quoted in the New Testament. — Time of Hag
gai. — Division of his Book into Four Parts, containing Three
Exhortations in Relation to the Rebuilding of the Temple, and
a Promise of the Favor of Jehovah to Zerubbabel. — Quotation
in the New Testamenti — Authenticity and Contents of the
First Eight Chapters of Zechariah. — Exhortation to Repent
ance. — Visions, — of Horses, — of Smiths, — of a Man with a
Measuring-Line, — of the High-Priest, the Angel, and the Ad
versary, — of a Candlestick and Olive-Trees, — of a Flying
Roll, — of a Woman and an Ephah Measure, — and of Four
Chariots. — Preparation of a Crown for the High-Priest. — Na
ture and Rewards of Acceptable Obedience. — Time of the Com
position of the Last Six Chapters. — Their Subject, Antici
pations of Future National Calamities, Repentance, and Exal
tation. — Quotations in the New Testament. — Supposed Pre
dictions of Jesus. — Age of Malachi. — Contents of his Book. —
Rebukes of Popular Discontents, — of Profanation of Sacred
Rites, — of Illegal Marriages. — Approaching Chastisement,
Reformation, and Restored Prosperity. — Application of the
Principles of a Righteous Retribution. — Quotations in the
New Testament. — Supposed Predictions of Jesus.
I
The Book of Jonah consists of forty-eight verses
only, being exceeded in length by several of the
Psalms. Though reckoned among the Minor Proph
ets, it has no resemblance to the rest of the books
in that collection. It contains a narrative of certain

Lm] JONAH. 465
extraordinary transactions, into which is incorporated
a poem said to have been uttered by Jonah as a prayer.
Jonah is an historical character. We read that
Jeroboam the Second "restored the coast of Israel,
from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain,
according to the word of the Lord God of Israel,
which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the
son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-
hepher." * The book is called by his name because
his adventures make its subject, and not by way of in
timating that he was its author. It contains numerous
Chaldaisms, indicating an origin as late as the time
of the captivity; and the extracts from the Psalms,
composing the hymn in the second chapter, are partly
from Psalms themselves probably belonging to that
period.-)* The extreme difficulties of interpreting this narra
tive as real history are obvious, and need not be en
larged upon. The plan of Jonah " to flee to Tarshish
from the presence of Jehovah," from whom he had
received a commission as his prophet ; his being swal-
* 2 Kings xiv. 25. — Nowhere else, out of the book which bears his
name, is Jonah mentioned in the canonical Old Testament. There was a
Rabbinical conceit that he was the son of the widow of Zarephath raised by
Elijah from the dead (comp. 1 Kings xvii. 24). But it appears to have had
no better foundation than the derivation of 'flDX, Amittai, the name of Jo
nah's father, from nDX, Truth, coupled with the fact of the widow's saying
to Elijah, "By this I know  that the word of the Lord in thy
mouth is truth." Zarephath was not Gath-hepher, nor was it so much as
a Jewish town ; and the times of Elijah and Jeroboam the Second were a
century apart. Gath-hepher was a town of Zebulon. Comp. Josh. xix.
13. f I do not lay stress, with Jahn, on the expression (iii. 3), " Nineveh was
a great city," as indicating an origin of the work as late as the last quarter
of the seventh century B. C, when Nineveh was taken and sacked. (See
above, p. 151.) It is true that the verb must be translated as in the past
sense, but I think there would be nothing unnatural in using that sense in
such a. connection, even though the city were still standing, in all its glory-

466 JONAH. [LECT.
lowed by a fish, and remaining alive in the fish's en
trails for three days ; his prayer there uttered, having
no suitableness whatever to the situation ; the sudden
ness and extraordinary demonstration of the repent
ance of the king and people of Nineveh at his preach
ing ; his absurd resentment at that result, and the
growth and withering of the gourd beneath which he
sheltered himself from the sun ; — such are some of
those features of the story which make its general re
ception in the character of an account of actual occur
rences one of the riddles of the human mind.
The narrative is as follows : — Jehovah directed Jo
nah to go to Nineveh, and rebuke it for its wickedness.
Disobeying the direction, " he went down to Joppa,"
the well-known Mediterranean sea-port, " and found a
ship going to Tarshish, and paid the fare thereof, and
went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from
the presence of Jehovah." Jehovah sent a furious
storm, which threatened to overwhelm the vessel.
The mariners threw overboard the cargo to lighten it,
" and cried every man to his god." Unconscious of
the tumult and the danger, Jonah " lay and was fast
asleep." The master came and woke him, and bade
him invoke his god like the rest. Having ascertained
by casting lots that it was on Jonah's account that the
evil had befallen them, the sailors learned from him
that he was a Hebrew, and a worshipper of Jehovah,
from whose presence he had fled, and. that the way for
them to provide for their own safety was to cast him
into the sea. Reluctant to do this, " the men rowed
hard to bring the ship to the land, but they could not."
So, having prayed to Jehovah not to lay innocent
blood to their charge, they did as Jonah advised.
" And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men
feared Jehovah exceedingly, and offered sacrifice to

LUL] JONAH. 467
Jehovah, and made voavs. And Jehovah had prepared
a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in
the belly of the fish three days and three nights." *
" Then Jonah prayed to Jehovah from the belly of
the fish." His prayer has no appropriateness to the
singular circumstances in which he is represented as
being placed. It seems rather the hymn of thanks
giving of one who, having been literally or figuratively
" cast into the deep," and compassed about by the
floods, has obtained deliverance in answer to prayer,
and noAV renews the vows of thanksgiving which he
had made in his distress. Of every verse of which it
is constituted, either the whole or a considerable part
is taken from the Psalms. f
The hymn finished, " Jehovah commanded the fish,
and it cast out Jonah upon the dry land." Directed a
second time to go to Nineveh, he obeyed. It was
" three days' journey in extent. And Jonah began to
enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried out
and said, ' Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over
thrown.' And the men of Nineveh believed God,
and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the
greatest of them even to the least of them. For when
the matter came to the king of Nineveh, he arose from
his throne, and put away his robe from him, and cov
ered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And
he caused it to be proclaimed and published through
Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles,
saying, ' Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock,
taste any thing ; let them not feed, nor drink water.

* Jonah 1 - 17.
| ii. 1-9. — With 2, comp. Ps. cxx. 1; with 3, Ps. xiii. 7; with
4, Ps. xxxi. 22; with 5, Ps. xviii. 5, lxix. 1 ; with 6, Ps. xvi. 10 ; with 7,
Ps. xviii. 6, lxxxviii. 2, cxlii. 4, ,5 ; with 8, Ps. xxxi. 6 ; with 9, Ps. iii.' 8,
cxvi. 17, 18.

468 JONAH. [LECT.
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and
cry mightily to God. Yea, let them turn every one
from his evil way, and from the violence that is in
their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and re
pent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we
perish not % ' And God saw their works, that they
turned from their evil way ; and God repented of the
evil Avhich he had said that he would do to them, and
he did it not."*
" This displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was
very angry." He prayed to Jehovah, and said that
he had declared it would be so before he left his own
country, and therefore he had " made haste to flee to
Tarshish," because he knew that Jehovah was " a gra
cious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant
in mercy," and apt to relent when he had threatened
evil. " ' And now, O Jehovah,' " said he, " ' take, I pray
thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die
than to live.' And Jehovah said, ' Is it right that
thou shouldst be angry V" X
Outside of the city, by its eastern wall, Jonah had
built a booth, to shelter him " till he should see Avhat
would become of the city." Jehovah, careful for his
comfort, made a gourd grow over him, and afford him
a grateful defence against the sun. " And Jonah was
exceedingly glad of the gourd. But God prepared a
worm, when the morning rose the next day, and it
smote the gourd so that it withered. And when the
sun arose, God prepared a sultry east wind ; and the
sun beat upon the head of Jonah, and he was faint,
and he asked for himself death, and said, ' It is better
for me to die than to live.' And God said to Jonah,
' Is it right that thou shouldst be angry for the gourd ] '
* Jonah ii. 10- iii. 10. f iv. 1-4.

LIH.] JONAH. 469
And he said, ' It is right that I should be angry even
to death.' And Jehovah said, ' Thou hast had pity on
the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, and which
thou madest not to grow, which greAV up in a night
and perished in a night ; and should not I spare Nin
eveh, that great city, wherein are more than a hundred
and twenty thousand persons, that cannot discern be
tween their right hand and their left hand, and also
many cattle 1 '" *
Such are the contents of the book of Jonah. It is
a short fictitious narrative, such as in these days we
should call a novellette. Certainly it does not conform
to our models or to our taste. It would be a much
more singular circumstance if it did, than that it does
not. The ancient classical nations had nothing cor
responding to our novel ; nor is our drama the drama
of Greece, or of Rome, or of the early age of English
literature. But unless we are ready to deny that
there is a principle in the mind of universal man
which causes it to take pleasure in ideal combinations
of events, it is out of the question to say that the Jews
cannot be supposed, ever to have written fiction, de
signedly and avowedly as fiction, and that accordingly
the form of narrative must necessarily denote verita
ble history ; — or to argue that their narratives could
not have been fictitious, because their forms of fiction
do not resemble ours. ?
Fictitious narrative of one kind, that called by us
the parable, is a familiar form of Jewish composition,
and abounds in the writings of both the Old and the
NeAV Testament. By the parable, as use has • deter
mined the acceptation of the word, we mean a short
story so framed as to inculcate a moral. If in the

* Jonah iv. 5-11.
VOL. III. 40

470 JONAH. [LECT.
Book of Jonah we discern a moral which it is suited
to illustrate and enforce, it is just as natural and legit
imate to understand the story in that book as a para
ble, as to interpret in that way the narrative of the
Good Samaritan or of the Prodigal Son, the latter of
which is more than half as long.
To the judgment of candor I propose the following
as an explanation of the narrative, on the supposition
of its being a parable.* The Jewish nation was Je
hovah's prophet, his messenger and witness, to the
heathen world.f Yet, instead of performing this high
office faithfully and cheerfully, they shrank from it,
and, in other things as well as this, disobeyed and out
raged their benefactor. Still, faulty as they were
themselves, they had no charity for the faults of oth
ers. While it was their duty to call other nations to
repent, they regarded other nations with such hatred,
that they would prefer to have them continue impeni
tent, and be destroyed by Jehovah for their impeni
tence; and whenever Jehovah was disposed to spare
offenders, they were disposed to complain, as if a
wrong was done to themselves. Was it not suitable
for the author of the Book of Jonah to rebuke in a
parable the unreasonableness of - such a course and
such a temper, as Nathan rebuked David in the para
ble of the ewe lamb, or as Jesus rebuked the Jews of
his time in the parables of the unfruitful fig-tree, the
wicked husbandmen, and the persons who would not
come to the marriage feast % X

* The book may contain a parable, even though, at this distant day, we
should not be able satisfactorily to point out its intended moral. There have
been very various opinions respecting the lesson conveyed by the story of
the laborers in the vineyard, in Matt. xx. 1-16. But that the story was
meant for a parable, no reader doubts.
f Ps. cv. 12-15; Is. xiii. 1, 5, 6, 19, xliii. 10 (see above, pp. 241, 242).
X 2 Sam. xii. 1 et seq.; Luke xiii. 6 et seq.; Matt. xxi. 33 et seq.; xxii.
1 et seq.

LHL] JONAH. 471
Jonah, like the Jewish nation, Avas inclined to avoid
a prophet's office. But he could not escape from Je
hovah's reach, and was compelled, however reluctant,
to do that duty ; so the Jews, having the Law, could
not help being Jehovah's witness to an idolatrous
world. They might be drowsy and insensible, and
forget Jehovah's might, as Jonah slept Avhile a tempest
raged around him ; but all would not avail.* Even if
the most improbable and extraordinary means were
necessary to hold them to their task, such means were
all in Jehovah's power, and would be put in requisi
tion; as Jonah, embarked for a distant voyage, was
brought back by a sea-monster to be disgorged upon
the shore. In his trouble, he determined to amend.
" I will pay," he said, " that .vhich I have vowed ;
salvation is from Jehovah." So of his fickle nation :
" When he slew them, then they sought him, and they
returned and inquired early after God, and they re
membered that God was their Rock, and the high
God their Redeemer." f When Jonah at length did
his duty, Nineveh forthwith repented ; so, if the Jew
ish nation would do theirs, they would find the world
much less hard to 'impress and convert than they chose
to think it ; the Gentile obduracy of which they com
plained was in great part owing to their own careless
ness and inefficiency. But when Nineveh repented,
Jonah, instead of being gratified, Avas angry, for he
would rather have had it continue impenitent, re-

* In a spirit far different from that which Jonah was presently to show,
the mariners did their best to save him, even though they knew him to be
the cause of their misfortune, and believed that their safety required his de
struction (i. 13) ; and when they felt obliged to sacrifice him, they did it
with prayers for forgiveness ; thus the humane conduct of these hea
then rebuked the illiberal and vindictive sentiments of the Jews towards
them. f Ps. lxxviii. 34, 35.

472 JONAH. [LECT.
sist Jehovah's summons, and provoke his wrath to its
destruction ; * the same Avas the savage spirit of too
many of the Jews, and the same was the passionate
and insolent language in which they allowed them
selves to complain of the long-suffering of Jehovah to
wards transgressors.")* God gave Jonah a lesson, by
suddenly withering a plant which had bent over him
with a refreshing shade, and, when he angrily resented
this too, proceeding to ask him whether, if the inflic
tion of such a little hardship seemed wrong, it could
be right to wish the extinction, without cause, of the
population of a great city ; and that lesson of moder
ation and of humanity was one which it would profit
the chosen people too to learn, and very useful to them
would be the parable which should illustrate it.
If it be said that there are particulars in the narra
tive which do not appear to have a bearing on the in
culcation of this moral, I reply that, if it be so, that
is no objection to the explanation I propose, for two
reasons; — 1. It may perfectly well be that features of
the story extremely significant to contemporary read
ers have lost their force for us, for want of acquaint
ance with the allusions intended. 2. It is a law of
this class of compositions, universally recognized by
the critics, that many things in parables, having no
force in the way of illustration of the main sense, nor
any correspondence with it, are inserted merely for the
completion and embellishment of the story. X
But, I repeat, every short fiction is not a parable;
that is,, a fiction with a moral. It was as natural for
* Jonah's ill-temper has some resemblance to Elijah's, as recorded in 1
Kings xix.
f Ps. cxxxvii. 7-9 ; Mai. ii. 17.
X For illustrations of this point, all-important to be considered in the ex
position of parables, see Glass, " Philologia Sacra," Lib. II. Pars I. Tract.
2, §5.

Lm-1 JONAH. 473
a Jew to write a fictitious story, as it is for us, with
Avhom they are reckoned a perfectly legitimate form of
composition. And if any reader thinks that the Book
of Jonah cannot be interpreted with probability as a
parable, it by no means follows that he is compelled,
as his only remaining resource, to regard it as having
been intended for a narrative of actual occurrences.
In favor of this last hypothesis, some stress has been
laid upon the fact, that our Lord, in one of his dis
courses, illustrates his entombment during three days
by the confinement of Jonah in the fish's body*
Would Jesus, it is asked, have made such a reference
to Avhat was not a real event l Why not 1 Who will
maintain, in terms, any such principle of interpreta
tion as Avhat that argument rests upon1? Who will
pretend that, consistently with all the uses of language,
illustrations may not be, and are not constantly, drawn
from well-known fictions, just as from well-known
facts ] If, even in the solemnity of pulpit discourse, a
speaker should exhort his audience to copy the kind
ness of the Good Samaritan, or to avoid the reckless
courses of the Prodigal Son, would any one have a
right to argue that he considered what was on record
of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son as histor
ically true'? Jesus bade his hearers imitate the Good
Samaritan in language quite as strong as that in which
he compared his three days' burial to Jonah's. "f"
I suppose this work to have been the production of
some Jew in Babylon during the time of the captivity,
who very suitably took for the hero of his tale a per
son of whose position and extraction there happened
to be a brief hint in the national history of the third
century before. I have laid no stress on attempts

Matt. xii. 40. f Luke x. 37.
40*

474 HAGGAI. [LECT.
which have been made to identify the story with an
cient Gentile legends. None of them have seemed to
me to be well sustained. Nor do I attach any impor
tance to the suggestion, that, in fixing the embarka
tion of Jonah at Joppa, a place noted of old as the
scene of various fables, the writer meant to intimate
at the outset that it was a fable that he was propos
ing to indite.
The book is not quoted in the New Testament.
In the Book of Ezra we read that the rebuilding of
the temple, which had been undertaken in the year
535 Bf C, the year after the return of Zerubbabel
and his company to Jerusalem,* was interrupted, and
" ceased unto the second year of the reign of Darius,
king of Persia," or 520 B. Cf " Then," it is said, " the
prophets, Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah, the son
of Iddo, prophesied unto the Jews that were in Judah
and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel." X
A favorable decree having been obtained from Darius,
" the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered
through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet, and
Zechariah, the son of Iddo ; and they builded and fin
ished it, according to the commandment of the God of
Israel." §
What remains of Haggai's "prophesying" on this
occasion we have in the short book which bears his
name. It naturally divides itself into four parts. The
first, occupying the former of the two chapters, relates
an exhortation to go about the building of God's
house, said to have been addressed " to Zerubbabel,
the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua,
the son of Josedech, the high priest," " in the second
* Ezra iii. 8-11. f iv- 4~6. 24- X v- L § vi. 14.

LHL] HAGGAI. 475
year of Darius, the king, in the sixth month, on the
first day of the month." The people said, " The time
is not yet come, the time that the house of Jehovah
should be built." The prophet remonstrated with
them in his name, that they should think it " a time to
dwell in ceiled houses " themselves, while their God
continued houseless. For that sin of theirs, he told
them, it was, that nothing prospered with them ; that
they sowed much, and reaped little; that food and
drink did not nourish, nor raiment warm, nor the
wages of labor stay by them. Let them " go up to
the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house."
Then Avould Jehovah be appeased, and show them fa
vor. Till then, the heavens would withhold their dew,
and the earth its fruit. A drought would wither all
" that which the ground bringeth forth," and bring
distress "upon men and upon cattle."* — The lesson
took effect. The governor, the high-priest, and the
people gave heed, " and the people feared before Jeho
vah." The prophet then, in Jehovah's name, assured
them of his presence and favor, " and Jehovah stirred
up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, gov
ernor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of
Josedech, the high-priest, and the spirit of all the peo
ple, so that they came, and did Avork upon the house
of Jehovah of hosts, their God, on the four-and-tAven-
tieth day of the sixth month, in the second year of
Darius, the king." f
About a month after the Avork was resumed, Hag
gai again addressed the governor, the priest, and peo
ple, to reconcile them to the inferiority of the temple
they were building to that Avhich some of them had
seen " in its former glory." They were not to suffer
* Hag. i. 1-11. t i- 12-15.

476 HAGGAI. [LECT.
themselves to be disheartened by the comparison, for
Jehovah was with them agreeably to the covenant
which he made with them on their departure from
Egypt. Before long, he would " shake the heavens
and the earth, the sea and the dry land," and bring
about great changes. The wealth of the world was
all at his disposal. He would " fill this house with
glory," and direct to it the tribute of " the precious
things of all the nations," and make greater "the glory
of this latter house than of the former," and signalize
it with prosperity ; * — all which has interest and pro
priety as the expression of the hopes of a pious Jew,
but would be wronged in being interpreted as predic
tion, and could not be defended as such.
The next passage, dated two months later, is sub
stantially a repetition of the topics of the first chapter.
Haggai represents himself as having inquired of the
priests whether " holy flesh " carried " in" the skirt "
would impart its holiness to any other food which the
skirt might touch ; and again, whether, if a man un
clean by reason of contact with a dead body should
touch such things, it would make them too ritually
unclean ; — questions, to the former of which, of
* Hag. ii. 1-9. — " The Desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill
this house with glory " (7) , says King James's version ; and the expression
is applied to Jesus. But, — 1. The translation is preposterous; rnpn, pre
cious things, is a collective noun, and the verb is in the plural number.
2. The connection clearly indicates the acceptation in which the word is
here to be taken. 3. Jesus never came into the temple erected in Haggai's
time ; he came into the temple of Herod, which was a new erection, and no
more Zerubbabel's temple than it was Solomon's. " Can there," well asks
Dr. Heberden, as quoted by Newcome in his commentary on the text, " can
there be a weaker argument than that which sets out with doing violence to
the original text in order to form a prophecy, and then contradicts the ex
press testimony of the best historian of those times in order to show that it
has been accomplished? " The historian referred to is Josephus, who says
("Antiq. Jud.," Lib. xv. cap. 11, ^3) that Herod, "having taken away the
old foundations, and laid others," proceeded to erect his temple.

LIII] HAGGAI. 477
course, he received a negative, and to the latter an
affirmative, reply. Upon which Haggai proceeded to
say what apparently was designed to import that, in
like manner, the holiness of the temple did not com
municate itself to the people, but, on the contrary, their
own moral impurities and neglect of what was due to
Jehovah vitiated all their labors. And he called on
them to look back, and recollect what their condition
was, and hoAv they found all their calculations doomed
to disappointment, and the ban of Jehovah upon them,
before their Avork on the temple was resumed. He
bade them look back from the day on which he was
now addressing them, and consider whether even yet
they had their accustomed supplies. But the Avork
was now fairly in progress, and henceforward they
might look for Jehovah's blessing and for produc
tive seasons.*
The last division of the book contains, in four verses,
a record of the declaration said to have been made by
the prophet to Zerubbabel on the same day, that while
Jehovah would " shake the heavens and the earth, and
overthrow the thrones of kingdoms, and destroy the
strength of the kingdoms of the nations, and over
throw the chariots, and those that ride in them," and
strike down the horses and their riders by each others'
swords, he had chosen Zerubbabel to be his servant,
and Avould keep him as his own signet.f
The passage beginning Avith the sixth verse of the
second chapter is imagined by Hengstenberg, as it has
been by others, to be a prediction of the Saviour.
Part of that verse is quoted in the Epistle (so called)
to the Hebrews,^ being the only New Testament quo
tation from this book.
* Hag. ii. 10-19. f "• 20-23. J Heb. xii. 26.

478 ZECHARIAH. [LECT.
In the Book of Ezra, " Zechariah, the son of Iddo,"
is mentioned as having been associated with Haggai
in urging forward the building of the temple after the
return from Babylon.* The prophecies ascribed to
" Zechariah, the son of Barachiah, the son of Iddo, the
prophet," X ai'e contained in the book of the Minor
Prophets. Of the fourteen chapters of which the book called
by the name of Zechariah consists, the first eight,
from the topics which they treat, are very satisfacto
rily referred to him as their author. The first chapter
begins with a simple exhortation to repentance, said
to have been addressed to the returned exiles " in the
eighth month, in the second year of Darius." The
prophet tells them, that, much as Jehovah had been
displeased with their fathers, he had still favor for
them, if they would not imitate their fathers' obdu
racy. Their fathers had disappeared from, the earth,
as well as the prophets, who from age to age had re
buked them. But they had successively been com
pelled to own that the judgments denounced against
their sins had overtaken them. J
The next passage is introduced by a singular phra
seology, showing, in yet another manner than has hith
erto occurred, the impossibility of putting a literal
construction on the phrase " the Avord of the Lord
came " to a prophet. We read here that " on the four-
and-twentieth day of the eleventh month,  in
the second year of Darius, came the word of Jehovah
to Zechariah,  the prophet, saying, — ' I saw
in the night, and behold, a man riding upon a red
horse,' " &c. Applying the usual mode of interpreta
tion to the phrase, we should have to understand that
• Ezra v. 1, vi, 14. f- Zech. i. 1. J i. 1 -6.

LUL] ZECHARIAH. 479
Jehovah declared himself to have seen the vision in
question, to have inquired into its meaning, and to
have been informed of it by an angel.
The prophet employs the common poetical form of
a description of a vision, to convey encouragement to
his countrymen. He sees couriers, arrived from all
quarters, who report that everywhere the aspect of
the times is peaceable, and therefore favorable for re
building the temple; and the attendant angel who
obtains for him this answer also procures from Jehovah
the assurance, that his favor is restored to Jerusalem,
and his anger kindled against the nations who had in
flicted on it more evils than, though justly displeased,
he had intended that it should suffer. He now
chooses it for his own ; he will cause his house to be
built in it, and establish it in great prosperity*
The chapter concludes with a vision of four horns
and four smiths. The former, as the prophet is in
formed by his companion, are " the horns Avhich have
scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem " ; while the
smiths " are come to make them afraid, and to cast out
the horns of the nations which lifted up their horn
against the land of Judah to scatter it." "j"
Again, Zechariah represents himself to have lifted
up his eyes, " and looked, and behold, a man with a
measuring-line in his hand." To the prophet's inquiry
whither he was going, the man replied that he was
* Zech. i. 7-17. — "The cities of Judah, against which thou hast had
indignation these threescore and ten years " (12). The second year of Da
rius Hystaspis, in which this prophecy is dated (comp. 7) was the year 520
B.C. The destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar was in 588 B. C.
Zechariah appears to reckon back in round numbers from the time when he
was writing to that event. But the time when he was writing was fifteen
years after the return from the captivity in consequence of Cyrus's decree,
making the time between the exile and the return less than fifty-five years,
instead of seventy.
f i. 18-21.

480 ZECHARIAH. [LECT.
going to measure the length and breadth of Jerusalem.
But one angel bade another tell the measurer, that Je
rusalem could not be limited by walls of any measure
ment, " for the multitude of men and of cattle within
her " ; that instead of such defences Jehovah would in
close her like a wall of fire, and dwell within her a
perpetual glory.* Jehovah had bidden that portion of
his people which yet lingered in Chaldea to " flee out
of the land of the North," and from the four quarters
of heaven to which he had dispersed them. He had
called on them to escape from their Babylonish spoil
ers, Avho, in touching them, had touched the apple of
his own eye, and in recompense of their cruelty should
themselves be made a spoil to those whom they had
wronged. Jehovah would come and dwell in the
midst of his people, and of the many other nations
who should yield themselves to his sway. Jehovah
would again choose Jerusalem, and take possession of
Judah, and all flesh should listen with awe to the edicts
published from his holy mountain.f
The third chapter presents the same topic, — that of
the future prosperous religious and political condition
of Israel. Under the figure of " Joshua the high-
priest," " clothed with filthy garments," " standing be
fore the angel of Jehovah, and the adversary standing
at his right hand to accuse him," the prophet repre
sents the poverty and debasement into which the once
palmy greatness of his people in respect to religious
privilege had fallen, and its demerit in the sight of
Jehovah. But he is always waiting to be gracious.
Instead of listening favorably to accusations against
Israel, and loading it with reproaches, he rebukes the
accuser, and treats Israel as a brand plucked by his
* Zech. ii. 1-5. t u- 6-13.

Lm-1 zecha'riah. 481
mercy from the flames. The squalid garments that
typified the degradation of its priesthood are directed
to be .exchanged for " a fair mitre " and " goodly ap
parel " ; and Jehovah promises that, if they will walk
in his ways, and keep his charge, they shall rule his
house, and keep his courts, and he will cause to come
his "servant, the Branch," and will at once "remove
the iniquity of the land," and its people shall invite
each other to a bountiful and peaceful hospitality .*
Zechariah next describes a vision, seen by him as
by " a man that is wakened out of his sleep," of " a
candlestick, all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of
it, and its seven lamps upon it, and seven pipes to the
seven lamps upon the top of it; and two olive-trees
by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the
other upon the left side of it." He inquires of the an
gel, his companion, what is the meaning of this show,
and is answered, that it signifies that, though now is
"the day of small things," by the power of Jehovah
Zerubbabel shall accomplish great things, and finish
amidst the plaudits of the people the temple of which
he has laid the foundation ; that the seven lamps rep
resent " the eyes of Jehovah, which run to and fro
through the whole earth," and by which " with joy
shall the plummet be seen in the hand of Zerubba
bel " ; and that the two olive-trees denote " the two
* Zech. iii. 1-10. — "I will cause to come my servant, the Branch " (8)1
By the Branch, say most of the commentators, Zechariah means the Mes
siah, the Christ ; and in this, I think, they are right, and they are wrong.
They are right in supposing that he had in view the Messiah, according to
the traditional idea of that personage (comp. vi. 12, 13 ; Jer. xxiii. 5-8;
xxxiii. 15, 16), and hoped that he would presently appear to complete the
temple, and reestablish the nation. They are wrong in imagining that he
had any notion whatever of the character and office of Jesus of Nazareth.
 " Upon this one stone shall seven eyes be fixed " (9) ; the sense is doubt
ful but I think the reference is to the eyes of Jehovah's watchfulness fixed
upon the temple (comp. iv. 10).
VOL. III. 41

482 ZECHARIAH. [LECT.
anointed ones that stand before the Lord of all the
earth." * By the " two anointed ones " appear to be in
tended the king and priest, the civil and ecclesiastical
rulers ; under whose guidance (themselves guided by
the Lord) the civil and ecclesiastical state should pros
per. But the whole imagery employed is of very vague
significance ; and it is fruitless to attempt to trace with
any accuracy the workings of the writer's mind. His
main object appears to have been to encourage Ze
rubbabel in the work that had been undertaken ; and
the symbolizing of the priest and the ruler as olive-
trees may have been designed to indicate them as sour
ces or representatives of -the national fruitfulness.
The prophet next describes himself as seeing " a
•flying roll," twenty cubits long, and ten broad.
" This," the attendant angel informs him, " is the
curse that goeth forth over the whole land," to be ful
filled in ample retribution to " every one who stealeth,
and every one who sweareth falsely." The sense ap
pears to be simply that Jehovah will carefully mark
the offences of dishonest and perjured men, and that
they will be overtaken by many and grievous pun
ishments, indicated by the large dimensions of the roll
on which they are registered."]"
According to the best insight which I can obtain
into the next passage, its import is that Babylon
(Shinar X) is the place where wickedness belongs ; —
it must have no place in Judea. Zechariah sees an
ephah-measure, with a woman sitting on it, who, he is
told, is Wickedness. A heavy weight is placed upon
her, to confine her in the measure, and two female fig
ures, with " wings like the wings of a stork," lift up
the burden " between the earth and heaven," and
* Zech. iv. 1-14. f v. 1 -4. —Comp. Ezek, ii. 9, 10.
X Comp. Gen. x. 10.

LUL] ZECHARIAH. 483
carry it aAvay "to build it a house in the land of
Shinar, that it may be fixed there, and set upon its
base."* It is in vain to undertake to give reasons for
the selection of every particular of this imagery.
In the vision described in the beginning of the fol
lowing chapter, which terminates the series of compo
sitions of this kind, it may be presumed that there are
allusions, perfectly intelligible to a contemporaneous
reader, but of which the significance is lost to us for
want of acquaintance with the circumstances of that
distant age. The main sense appears to be, that in the
great disorders of the time the Jews have nothing to
fear, for to their patron, Jehovah, all the agents of na
ture are subject.f In the remaining verses of the
chapter the prophet represents himself as directed to
collect silver and gold from certain persons lately ar
rived from Babylon, " and make a crown, and set it
upon the head of Joshua, the son of Josedech, the
high priest, and speak to him, saying, Thus saith Je
hovah of hosts :
" ' Behold, a man whose name is the Branch,
He shall spring up from his place,
And he shall build the temple of Jehovah.
He shall build the temple of Jehovah,
And he shall bear the majesty,
And sit and rule upon his throne,
And be a priest upon his throne,
And the counsel of peace shall be between them both.' " — vi. 11- 13.
This done, the crown, under the custody of two of the
four contributors to it, and two other persons, is to be
placed " for a memorial in the temple of Jehovah,''
against the time when " they that are far off shall
come and build in the temple of JehoA'ah," an event
* Zech. v. 5-11.
+ vi. 1-8. — Jahn says ("Einleitung," Th. II. § 159) that these are
Mao-ian representations of the god of war, Behram. But his reference to
Herodotus does not sustain the remark.

484 ZECHARIAH. [LECT.
which would come to pass, if the people would only
be obedient.*
With particular reference to that portion of the
Book of Zechariah at which we have now glanced, it
has been common to speak of the obscurity of his
style ; and even Lowth goes so far as to call him " the
most obscure of all the prophetic writers."]" I cannot
but think, however, that the great difficulties found in
the interpretation of his book arise simply out of the
application of the wrong principles of interpretation
assumed. I should rather say, it is a book peculiarly
hard to wrest into conformity with prevailing erro
neous opinions. Call it, as it is commonly called, a
collection of supernatural predictions, and it is true it
will defy our utmost skill to explain it on that basis.
Call it a collection of poems in a bold Oriental style,
and though, as must needs be under the circumstan
ces, there are parts of which the full significance will
escape us, yet the general tenor is intelligible enough.^
What follows in the next two chapters is substan
tially an inculcation of the principle, with little rhe-
* Zech. vi. 9 - 15. — " Take from those of the captivity," &c. (10) ; the
conjecture naturally occurs that this was the way which the prophet took
to obtain for the temple from these newly arrived Jews a contribution which
they were disposed to avoid. — "A man, whose name is the Branch," &c.
(12); the expected Messiah, as I understand, according to the erroneous
idea entertained by Zechariah of his time, character, and office. See above,
p. 481, note. — " He shall  be a priest upon his throne" (13);
an ancient element in the prevailing conception of the Messiah; comp. Ps.
ex. 4. — " The counsel of peace shall be between them both" (13) ; that
is, I suppose, the earthly ruler spoken of shall cordially carry out in his ad
ministration the designs of Jehovah.
f " Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews," Lect. 21.
X Rosenmuller's remark on this point is above the usual strain of his
criticism : — " Boih Jews and Christians complain of the obscurity of Zech
ariah's prophecies. Not a few things, however, in them, themselves plain,
are made obscure by the unfortunate propensity of interpreters to regard
general expressions of the prophet as having reference to the events of a
much later age." " In Zachariam Procemium," ad calc.

Lm] ZECHARIAH. 485
torical embellishment, that virtue is to be practised
rather than any ritual obedience ; to which doctrine is
annexed the promise, that, if it be duly regarded, the
.prosperity of the people shall be signal, and their fast
ings shall give place to thanksgiving festivals. Nearly
two years after the last date in the preceding compo-
sitions ,* it seems that an inquiry was addressed " to
the priests that were in the house of Jehovah of hosts,
and to the prophets," concerning the obligation of still
observing a fast Avhich had been kept in past years,
in mournful commemoration of the desolation of the
city."]" To this inquiry Zechariah replied, that that
fast and other fasts had not been really kept in the
spirit which they professed ; X that Jehovah continued
especially to require that service which, in the nation's
former prosperous days, had been demanded for him
" by the former prophets," a service consisting in jus
tice, mercy, and mutual good-will.§ It was for their
neglect of that service that " great anger from Jehovah
of hosts " had visited them, and " scattered them as
Avith a whirlwind among all the nations, which they
* Comp. Zech. vii. 1 with ii. 10. f vii. 1-3.
X vii. 4-6. — "When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth month and
in the seventh month, even those seventy years," &c (5). — The fasts
here referred to appear to have been insiituted in reference to the burning of
the city by Nebuzaradan, which took place in the fifth month (2 Kings
xxv. 8-10), and the massacre of Gedaliah and his party, which occurred
in the seventh month (Ibid., 2J5) of the year 588 B. C, exactly the seven
tieth year before that when Zedekiah is said (Zech. vii. 1, 5) to have uttered
this expostulation. I accordingly would render his words in verse 5 by
"these seventy years," instead of " those," and understand him as indicat
ing the time which elapsed between the events commemorated by fasts and
his conversation with the priests respecting them, here related, without any
allusion to Jeremiah xxv. 11, 12. But if he did mean to allude to this text
of Jeremiah, it is clear that he did not understand the word seventy in it
as indicating a definite number. For the events celebrated in the fasts of
which he speaks belonged to the captivity of the year 588 B. C, which cap
tivity was at an end in 536. See above, p. 344.
$ vii. 7-10. 41*

486 ZECHARIAH. [LECT.
knew not," and made " the glorious, land a desola
tion."* But his patient love had by no means been finally
estranged. He meant now to return to Zion, and
dwell in Jerusalem, and cause Jerusalem to " be called
a city of truth, and the mountain of Jehovah of hosts,
the holy mountain." Old men and old women should
walk with their staves along its streets, and its streets
be thronged with sportive children. To Jehovah noth
ing Avas impossible. He would conduct back his scat
tered people to their home from every distant region,
and they should be his beloved children, and he their
gracious God.f Let them take courage, for the sad
fortunes of the nation were reversed, since the time
when they had begun to rebuild Jehovah's house. Be
fore that day, the labor of man and beast was unprofit
able, and men had no security against each other's
violence. Henceforward every thing should prosper.
God would not be " as in former days toward the resi
due of the people." The vine should yield its fruit ; the
earth its increase ; the heavens their dew. As much
as they had been accursed, they should now be blessed.
As Jehovah had thought to do them evil, so he now
thought to do them good. Only let them shun the
things odious in his sight ; let them speak the truth,
judge according to the truth, and abstain from every
unkind purpose, and every false oath.J Then the
fasts concerning which they inquired should be con
verted into occasions of festive gladness, in which
" many nations," inviting and emulating each other,
should throng to take part, and " ten men of all lan
guages of the nations " should " take hold of the skirt
of him that is a Jew, saying, ' We will go with you,
for we have heard that God is with you.' " §
* Zech. vii. 11-14. f viii- l~s- t viii- 9~17- § viii. 18-32.

LI11-] ZECHARIAH. 487
The remaining portion of the book is of a very dif
ferent character from that Avhich Ave have hitherto ex
amined, and on satisfactory grounds must be regarded
as not the composition of Zechariah, but as belong
ing to a much earlier period of the Jewish history.
There is a marked difference, such as not to escape
the attention of even a careless reader, betAveen the
language and style of the last six and of the eight
preceding chapters. In the former portion is narrated
in order, with dates, a succession of visions mostly in
humble prose ; in the latter portion nothing of the
kind occurs, and its strain is that of elevated poetry.
In -the first part, one form of introducing the several
passages is constantly used;* in the other, a form
quite different, in which the name of Zechariah does
not occur.f But the circumstance perhaps most
clearly decisive is this ; that a state of things appears
throughout to be implied which existed before the Per
sian conquest, but not after. The writer has occasion
to utter cautions against idolatry and false prophets,
just as Jeremiah had done ; J and the Philistine cities,
Assyria, and Egypt are represented as formidable
powers, which they had been formerly, but were no
longer in Zechariah's time. §
Dr. Joseph Mede, Avho is believed to have been the
first who pointed out these facts, was of the opinion
that the latter portion of this book was to be ascribed
to Jeremiah, || agreeably to the form of a quotation
from it in the Gospel of Matthew. ^J Bishop NeAvcome
attributed the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters to
some writer before the overthrow of the northern king-
* Zech. i. 1, 7; iv. 8; vi. 9 ; vii. 1, 8; viii. 1, 18.
f ix. 1 ; xi. 4 ; xii. 1. J x. 2 ; xiii. 2-6.
§ ix. 3-6; x. 10, 11 ; xiv. 18, 19.
H See " Epistles " XXXI. and LXI. ; " Works," pp. 786, 833.
T[ Matt, xxvii. 9, 10 ; comp. Zech. xi. 12, 13.

488 ZECHARIAH. [LECT.
dom, and referred the remaining three to the age be
tween Josiah and the captivity.* Other distributions
of the contents of the passage have been made by
different critics ; but its style and method of treat
ment are throughout so uniform, as to give great force
to the opinion, that it is all the production of one au
thor. Who he was, cannot now be told. From the
quotation in Matthew it appears probable that no well-
accredited tradition respecting him had come down as
far as to the Apostolic age. His references to Damas
cus and the Philistine cities are in the same tone with
those of Jeremiah.")" He appears to have written after
the defeat of Josiah at Megiddo,^ and, on the other
hand, before the overthrow of the Assyrian power §
by the arms of the Babylonians and Medes.||
In the passage constituted of the ninth and tenth
chapters, the writer expatiates on the greatness and
prosperity of Judea, at a future time, when its ene
mies shall have been prostrated by the might of its
guardian god. Hadrach and Syria, Tyre and Sidon,
shall all feel his avenging hand.^[ Though Tyre be
* " Attempt towards an Improved Version," &c, in Zech. ix. 1. But it
by no means appears from the mention of "Israel " (ix. 1, xi. 14; comp.
Mai. ii. 11), or of Ephraim (ix. 10, 13, x. 6, 7), that the northern kingdom
was still in being. The writer is speaking of its condition after its expected
reestablishment. f With ix. 1-6, comp. Jer. xlvii. 1-7, xlix. 23-27.
X Zech. xii. 11 ; comp. 2 Chron. xxxv. 22-24.
§ Zech. x. 11.
|| -These chapters have a striking similarity to Zeph. i. -iii., and may
well belong to his time. Comp. Zech. ix. 1 et seq. with Zeph. ii. 4 et
seq. ; Zech. x. 10 with Zeph. iii. 10. Zephaniah's time was that of King
Josiah (Zeph. i. 1).
Tf ix. 1,2. — " The land of Hadrach" (1); Hadrach has been understood
to denote Persia, but I suppose on no probable grounds of evidence. —
"Against Hamath" (2); like Damascus, a city of Syria ; comp. Numb..
xiii. 21 ; xxxiv. 8. What had Judea to fear from Syria and the Mediter
ranean cities at the time of Zechariah, when they all alike were under the
peaceful sway of Persia?

LUI-1 ZECHARIAH. 489
strong and rich, " Jehovah will cast her out, and smite
her power into the sea, and she shall be devoured by
fire." The Philistine cities shall tremble at her fate,
and finally shall undergo the same, till they shall them
selves renounce idolatry, and oavu Jehovah's sway*
Meantime he will « encamp about " his people, afford
ing them sure protection, and suffering no oppressor
• to "pass through them any more." He will bless
their just and gracious sovereign with a happy and
tranquil administration, so that, instead of forcing his
bloody way through battle-fields on the war-chariot or
the charger, he shall but appear before his people,
" mild, and riding upon an ass," in the quiet pomp of
peace.f The peace he secures to his own people he
shall diffuse among other nations ; " and his dominion
shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends
of the earth," while Jehovah, remembering his cove
nant, will set all the captives of his people free, re
store them full of hope to the stronghold where pro
tection awaits them, and double all their ancient pros-
perity.J They shall be as arms in his own right hand, with
which he will strike down every opposing power,
while he himself launches his arrows in the lightning,
blows his trumpet in the thunder, and rides forth on
the " whirlwinds of the South " to battle for the pro
tection of his people. Joyful in that protection, they
shall " shout, as through wine," and be filled with glad
ness " like a bowl." " He will save his people as a
flock." They shall shine like jeAvels in a royal croAvn,
and " corn shall make the young men thrive, and new
wine the maidens." § Whatever troubles they suffer
* Zech. ix. 3-7. f Comp. Judges v. 10 ; x. 4 ; xii. 14.
X Zech. ix. 8-
§ ix. 13-17. — "Against thy sons, 0 Javan," or Greece (13); comp.
Ezek. xxvii. 13, 19.

490 ZECHARIAH. [LECT,
are by reason of their placing confidence in false shep
herds, of their listening to false teachers, whom Je
hovah designs to punish. Let them abandon these
treacherous guides, and look to Jehovah, and he will
visit them with the prosperity they desire. He will
equip them and their leaders for victory over their
enemies, " and they shall fight because Jehovah is
with them, and the riders on horses shall be con-'
founded."* He will establish and strengthen them
in their ancient home, " and they shall be as numer
ous as they were before." When they have remem
bered him in the wide dispersion of their exile, he will
" bring them bapk from the land of Egypt, and gather
them from Assyria." They shall return in such crowds
that " there shall not be room enough for them." As
of old, when their fathers came to Canaan, he shall
cause them to pass dry shod through sea and river,
and while " the pride of Assyria shall be brought
down, and the sceptre of Egypt shall depart," the
people of Jehovah shall be strengthened, walking in
his name."]"
The next chapter is occupied with prognostics of
the opposite character, — that of the mischiefs threat
ened to the nation from the counsels of vicious rulers,
and the turbulence of disorderly citizens. The writer
hears the sound of approaching destruction from the
ancient frontier. He hears it as it rolls down the sides
of Lebanon. He hears the fire rushing through the
cedar-forests of the mountain, and the crash of the
falling oaks of Bashan. He hears " the voice of
the howling of the shepherds, because their glory is
destroyed, the voice of the roaring of young lions, be
cause the pride of Jordan is destroyed." X The shep-
* Zech. x. 1-5. f x- 6~12- X xi' !-3-

LUI.] ZECHARIAH. 491
herds howl because the due punishment of their faith
lessness is coming. The flock is doomed to slaughter,
because it has trusted the faithless shepherds. Feed
thou them, the prophet seemed to hear Jehovah say ;
feed thou them with more wholesome instruction, for
their waywardness can no longer be borne, but sure
and speedy punishment must overtake them, through
each other's hands, and the hands of those who hold
them in vile bondage.*
Accordingly, continues the writer, I undertook to
feed the flock, and a miserable one it was, and I have
met with nothing at its hands but aversion and indig
nity. As a shepherd supplies himself with crooks to
marshal and control his flock, I armed myself, as it
were, with two influences. I sought to lead my sheep
to the favor of Jehovah, and to a brotherly friendship
and alliance among themselves. But I was doomed
to defeat and disappointment. It soon appeared that
there could be no good understanding between me and
the treacherous teachers. " I was weary of them, and
they also abhorred me." So that after a short strug
gle, and denouncing " three shepherds in one month,"
I gave up the thankless task, renounced my engage
ment, broke (so to speak) my crook Favor, and said
once for all, " I will not feed you ; that which will die,
let it die ; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut
off; and let the rest eat one another's flesh." And
" the poor of the flock who observed me," the honest
common . people, who knew and could appreciate the
reason of my course, approved it.-f
When I asked some recompense for my hard public
service, he continues, they insulted me with a mean
donation. Incensed at the disrespect shown, not only

* Zech. xi. 4-6. f xi- 7-lL

492 ZECHARIAH. [LECT.
to myself, but to him whose precepts and will I had
desired to enforce, I cast it back into the public treas
ury, and seeing no room to hope further for the exer
tion of any useful influence, I desisted from my ex
hortations to the culture of a brotherly spirit between
the tribes of Israel. I broke, as it were, " my other
crook, even Union." * In my anger I seemed to my
self to be excited by a zeal for Jehovah and a sensi
bility to his honor, to take to myself instead " the in
struments of a foolish shepherd," and to hear him say,
that, since his refractory people did but outrage those
who desired to be their benefactors, he would " raise
up a shepherd in the land, who shall not care for those
that are perishing, nor seek that which is gone astray,
nor heal that which is wounded, nor support that which
cannot go." But this Avas a hasty thought ; a moment's"
reflection showed him, that only shame and woe, weak
ness, blindness, and all sorts of mischief, awaited " the
foolish shepherd that leaveth the flock." "j"
The next passage, extending through the twelfth
chapter and six verses of the thirteenth, expresses the
writer's hope and expectation, that, through the help
of Jehovah, Israel will be victorious over the enemies
by which it is now beset, and, through repentance of
its past offences, attain to lasting and secure prosperity.
" Jehovah, who stretched out the heavens, and laid the
foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of
man," designs, " in the siege against Jerusalem," to
make that city " a burdensome stone for all nations,"
so that the nations that band themselves against it
shall only harm themselves. Jehovah " will smite

* xi. 12-14. — "Thirty shekels" (13); the price of a slave; comp.
Ex. xxi. 32. — 1SV; the treasury, not the potter; see Gesenius, adverb.
t xi. 15 - 17.

LmJ ZECHARIAH. 493
every horse Avith amazement, and his rider Avith mad
ness." Enforcing from the leaders of Judah the ac
knowledgment that it is through his protection that
they are strong, he will enable them to " devour all the
nations round about." Jehovah will " save the tents
of Judah first," and the capital city shall be visited
with no special favor, lest it should "magnify itself
against Judah." The feeblest of the people shall be
as strong as King David, and the royal house " shall
be as God " himself, and " all the nations which come
against Jerusalem " shall but rush on their own ruin .*
Such unmerited favor from Jehovah shall melt the
people to contrition for the offences by which they
have displeased, and as it were "pierced" and wounded
him, and with bitter grief, " as one that is in bitterness
for his first-born," " as the mourning of Hadadrimmon
in the valley of Megiddo," "J" the nation shall beAvail its
great unworthiness. They shall bewail it family by
family, each mourning apart, — the families of David,
of Nathan, of Levi, of Shimei, and all others, each
separate from the rest, and the men separate from their
wives. J Such penitence shall purify the offending race.
It shall be as a cleansing " fountain opened for sin and
for uncleanness." Thenceforward the names of idols
shall no more be remembered, and false teachers shall
disappear from the land. False teachers Avill no longer
practise their arts of deceit; they will no longer be
proud of their dishonorable profession ; sooner, they
will profess themselves to be menials or slaves.
Against a false teacher even father and mother will
feel such a holy indignation, as by their own hands to
put him to death ; and when he gives an account of
* Zech. xii. 1-9. t Comp. 2 Chron. xxxv. 22-24.
X Zech. xii. 10-14.
VOL. III. 42

494 ZECHARIAH. [LECT.
the wounds which he bears, he will have to say that it
was the hands of friends that inflicted them.*
The remainder of the book forebodes, in the usual
form, great national calamities, to be succeeded by as
signal public prosperity and glory. Jehovah designs
to smite the shepherd of his people, and scatter the
sheep, and turn his hand against the lambs. Two
thirds of the whole nation shall be cut off and die,
and only a third part survive. Jehovah " will bring
the third part through the fire, and will refine them,
as silver is refined, and will try them, as gold is tried."
They will call upon him, and he will answer ; and he
will acknowledge them for his people, and they will
own him as their God.f Jerusalem must be spoiled.
All nations will be embattled against her; " and the city
shall be taken, and the houses shall be rifled, and the
women shall be ravished, and half of the city shall go
forth into captivity." But Jehovah will manifest him
self for its deliverance. He will plant himself upon
the Mount of Olives, which shall be cloven in twain,
and its two parts shall move northward and southward,
and the fugitives shall take refuge in the valley be
tween. " And it shall come to pass in that day, that
there shall be no light, but cold and ice " ; " but at
the time of evening light shall break ; and it shall
come to pass in that day, that living waters shall go
out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern
sea, and half of them toward the western sea," nei
ther winter freezing, nor summer drying up their cur
rent; "and Jehovah shall be king over all the earth";

* Zech. xiii. 1-6.
f xiii. 7-9. — '"Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, even against
my fellow,' saith Jehovah of hosts " (7) ; my fellow, 'fi'tjj? "13J, rather, my
neighbour, my shepherd with whom I consort, my instrument in the govern
ment of my people.

LUI.] ZECHARIAH. 495
" the whole land shall be turned into a plain," from
the extreme northern and southern limits ; " and the
city shall be exalted and inhabited"; "and there
shall be no more destruction, but Jerusalem shall
dwell securely."*
Far different is to be the fate of " all the nations
which warred against Jerusalem." Jehovah will smite
them, and their flesh, their eyes, and their tongues
shall consume away. " There shall be a great tumult
among them from Jehovah," and they shall exterminate
each other in civil conflicts. Judah also shall fight
against them for its capital, and their spoils shall be
gathered in rich abundance. The very beasts in their
invading armies shall be SAvept away by the same
devastating pestilence of consumption of the flesh, eyes,
and tongue. At length all that survive of the hostile
nations shall own themselves subdued, and " every one
that is left of all the nations which come against Je
rusalem shall go up, from year to year, to worship the
King, Jehovah of hosts, and to keep the feast of taber
nacles." Upon the fields of those who shall refuse thus
to go up, no rain shall fall from the sky. Egypt is
not watered by rain; but the fields of Egypt, if her
people refuse to go to Jerusalem to keep the feast of
tabernacles, shall receive no moisture from the Nile,
and the plague before described shall be let loose
among them. No Canaanitish unbeliever shall be
seen in Jehovah's house. Every thing, everywhere,
shall be " holy to Jehovah " ; the very bells on the
horses of travellers shall bear an inscription of conse-

* Zech. xiv. 1-11. — " The earthquake, in the days of Uzziah " (5) ;
comp. Amos i. 1. — " From Geba to Rimmon " (10) ; comp. Josh. xxi. 17 ;
xv. 32. — « The gate of Benjamin " ; " the former gate " ; " the corner
gate"; "the tower of Hananeel " (10); comp. Jer. xxxvii. 12, 13;
xxxviii. 7 ; Neh. iii. 6 ; 2 Kings xiv. 13 ; Neh. iii. 1 ; Jer. xxxi. 38.

496 MALACHI. [LECT.
cration to him, like that on the turban of the high-
priest; every vessel in his house shall be as holy
"as the bowls before the altar"; every vessel for
domestic use shall be so sanctified that " all that sac
rifice shall come, and shall take of them, and seethe
therein." *
Four extracts from this book are quoted in the New
Testament, all from the concluding portion."]*
The instances specified by Hengstenberg of super
natural prediction of Jesus in this book are the fol
lowing; namely, the second chapter ; the eighth, ninth,
and tenth verses of the third chapter ; the ninth verse
of the ninth chapter ; and the passages beginning re
spectively with the ninth verse of the sixth chapter,
the eighteenth of the eighth, and the eleventh of the
tenth chapter. On the strength of these he pronoun
ces that, " next to Isaiah's, Zechariah's predictions of
the Messiah are more marked and distinct than those
of any other prophet." I have already, in their sever
al connections, given my view of their sense.
I will only add, that, in my judgment, whoever
Avill carefully read the fourteenth chapter, and then
deliberately maintain that its writer dealt in super
natural predictions, must have a very vigorous imagi
nation. There is no express note of the time of Malachi in
the book which bears his name. Its composition is,
however, on good grounds, referred to the age of Ne
hemiah, about a hundred years later than Zechariah.
The temple had been rebuilt, and the ritual reestab-
* Zech. xiv. 12-21.
f Zech. ix. 9, comp. Matt. xxi. 5, John xii. 15 ; Zech. xi. 12, 13,
comp. Matt, xxvii. 9, 10 ; Zech. xii. 10, comp. John xix. 37 ; Zech. xiii. 7,
comp. Matt. xxvi. 31, Mark xiv. 27.

Lllll MALACHI. 497
hshed;* and rebukes are uttered against the same
abuses which Nehemiah had to correct, f
The meaning of Malachi is " my messenger." Some
of the ancients supposed that Ezra was denoted by the
name; others, that it designated an incarnate angel.
But there is no reason for interpreting it otherwise
than as an actual proper name.
The book is occupied with various rebukes of the
writer's contemporaries. Some of them were discon
tented with the mean condition of their partially re
constructed commonwealth. They interpreted it as a
sign of Jehovah's indifference, and were fain to address
him Avith the reproachful inquiry, "Wherein hast thou
loved us 1 " To this the prophet replies, by asking
them to look at themselves, dwelling in tranquillity
under the benignant Persian rule, and then at Edom,
harassed and oppressed by- domineering invaders.
The Idumeans were descended from Isaac's elder son ;
they from the younger. Yet Jehovah had from the
first preferred Jacob's race to that of Esau, and now
in the latter days, while Judea was rejoicing in new
hope, he had made Esau's " mountains a desolation,
and his inheritance to be habitations of the desert."
Nor was the prosperity of Edom ever to know a
second spring. If they attempted to " rebuild the
desolate places," Jehovah would throw down as fast,
and for ever give to the Gentile nations occasion to
point to Edom as " the impious land, the people against
whom Jehovah hath indignation," and to the Jews oc
casion to declare that their God was capable, by his
judgments, of making his greatness manifest beyond
the borders of his own peculiar land.J
* Mai. i. 7 et seq., iii. 1.
f Mal.ii. 10-16; comp. Neh. xiii. 23-30 ; Mai. iii. 7-12; comp. Neh.
xiii. 5 - 14, et al. h. m.
X Mai. i. 1-5.
42*

498 MALACHI. [LECT.
A son owes honor to his father, a servant to his
master; but the children and servants of Jehovah
withheld the due respect from him. The priests af
fronted him, and profaned his service by offering lame,
sick, and blind victims on his altar. Would an earthly
governor, the prophet asks, be pleased with such treat
ment \ How, then, can it be expected to satisfy Jeho
vah of hosts, or make him benignant when they pray 1
It would be better that they should close his temple
doors, and kindle no more fire upon his altars. No
such insulting sacrifice will he accept. Bather will he
wait for worthy offerings till the time when the Gen
tiles shall magnify his name, and incense ascend to it,
and a pure oblation, in every place from the rising to
the setting of the sun.* Now his worshippers inso
lently offer to him what they would reject as food for
themselves, and, accounting his worship only vexation
and weariness, they discharge themselves of it at the
smallest cost, and " bring that which is plundered, and
lame, and sick, and present it for an offering." He
will receive no such gift, and his curse, the curse of
him who is " a great king," and " terrible among the
nations," awaits the hypocritical devotee who presumes
thus to defraud him of his dues.f
Nor will his curse rest alone on the unworthy dev
otee. The priests, too, who lend themselves to such
an abuse, shall share in the tokens of his displeasure.
He will send his curse upon them, and convert their
blessings into woe. He will extend the sentence to
their posterity. He will overwhelm them with dis
grace, till they shall understand that it was only on
condition of their observance of his commandments
that that covenant of his was to remain in force, by
Mai. i. 6-11. t i- 12-14.

LHL] MALACHI. 499
which so many privileges were secured to the family
of Levi* Levi was himself worthy of the distinc
tion. " The law of truth was in his mouth, and un
righteousness was not found in his lips ; he walked in
truth and equity, and turned many away from iniqui
ty." This was conduct becoming " the messenger
of the Lord of hosts " ; " for the lips of the priest
should keep knowledge, and men should seek the law
from his mouth," and not be encouraged by him to
break it. Priests like them, who had " departed from
the way," and " caused many to stumble at the law,"
had " made void the covenant with Levi," and their
punishment should be, that they should be divested of
their hereditary sacerdotal honors, and made " despica
ble and base before all the people.""}"
In respect to their matrimonial relations, the people
had fallen into those irregularities which Nehemiah
found it so difficult to reform. J They had divorced
their own Jewish wives, and married foreign women.
Are not all we Jews of one stock \ asks the prophet.
" Have we not all one father1? " and should we not there
fore regard in common the common interest of the
race'? Then "why do we deal treacherously, one
against another, and profane the covenant made with
our fathers % " § " Judah hath dealt treacherously,
 and hath married the daughter of a strange
god." " Jehovah will cut off " every citizen who has
offended in this respect; his offerings at the temple
shall not save him. II And as to that cruel inconstancy

* Mai. ii. 1-4. t "• 5-9.
X Comp. Neh. xiii. 23-30. § Comp. Deut. vii. 3.
|| Mai. ii. 10-12. — "Him that waketh and him that answereth"
(12) ; that is, every one ; similar expressions are, " he that is shut up and
he that is left" (1 Kings xiv. 10) ; " him that passeth out, and him that
eometh back " (Ezek. xxxv. 7) ; comp. 2 Chron. xv. 5.

500 MALACHI. [LECT.
which " covered the altar of Jehovah with tears, with
weeping, and with groans " of the wives of their
youth, it had provoked Jehovah's stern displeasure,
" so that he no more hath regard to the offering, nor
receiveth it with good-will." He was himself " a wit
ness " between the barbarous husbands and the help
less victims of their caprice. Though he had ample
creative power remaining, he created but one pair, in
tending them to be each other's constant companions,
and so to establish a godly race. The conjugal un
faithfulness which frustrated this purpose was hate
ful in his sight.*
Some of Malachi's contemporaries were wearying
the patience of Jehovah by their ungrateful com
plaints that he was exercising too much long-suffering
towards the ungodly world. " Every one of them that
do evil," they said, "is good in the sight of Jehovah,
and in them he hath delight " ; and they asked,
" Where is the God of judgment 1 " The prophet
tells them that the reforming and avenging Messiah,
" the messenger of the covenant," whom they desire to
see, will be sure to come ; that they may look for his
sudden coming ; and that they will do well to consider
whether it will not be themselves that he will have to
assay and to reject. " Who shall stand when he ap-
peareth % " He will institute a thorough purgation.
" He shall be like the fire of the refiner, and like the
soap of the fuller." " The sons of Levi " shall be sub
jects of his reforming authority, " that, being holy to
Jehovah, they may bring in righteousness " the offer
ings of the people. Then the purity and acceptable-
ness of the ancient worship shall be restored. Jeho
vah will in those times be " a swift witness " against
* Mai. ii. 13-16.

Lm] MALACHI. 501
all impious, impure, and dishonest men. He is un
changing in his attributes. If he were not unchange
able in mercy, the race of Jacob would long ago have
perished.* The people had been remiss in respect to the tithes
and offerings at the temple, exacted by the Law. The
prophet tells them that they might hope the past
would be forgiven, if they would amend for the fu
ture. A scarcity from which they Avere suffering was
a fit punishment for their robbery of God ; for this
they were " cursed with a curse." Let them " bring
all the tithes into the storehouse," so that there
might be food in Jehovah's house, and he would take
care that there should be abundance of food in theirs.
He would " open the Avindows of heaven," and from
them pour blessings without stint. He would rebuke
for them devouring insects so that trees and vines
should yield their fruits, and cause all nations to call
them blessed for their possession of " a delightful
land.""]" Once more, at the close of his short book, as he had
done at the beginning, the prophet rebukes murmurers,
who pronounced it " a vain thing to serve God," for,
though their nation " kept his ordinances," he visited
it with no distinguished favors, seeming rather to de
light in and prosper the proud nations that owned not
* Mai. ii. 17 -iii. 6. — "The messenger of the covenant" (iii. 1). I
understand the reference to be to Deut. xviii. 15, and to the conception of
the Messiah, partly correct, partly erroneous, founded by the nation in latter
times upon that passage ; comp. Vol. II. p. 378. A messenger is " a person
sent with a message," and the "prophet" spoken of by Moses was to be
raised up by God, and to be hearkened to by the people ; and he was properly
called a "messenger of the covenant," because Jehovah (so to speak) had
covenanted to send him. — " He shall prepare the way before me " (ibid.) ;
that is, clear from impediments the way by which I come to take possession
of my rightful authority over my people ; comp. Is. xl. 3 ; Ivii. 14 ; lxii. 10.
f iii. 7- 12 ; comp. Neh. xiii. 5.

502 MALACHI. [LECT.
his sway, but rather tempted and defied his displeas
ure. The prophet tells them, that Jehovah has taken
notice of their bold complaints, and not less has he ob
served, and recorded in the book of his remembrance,
the different behaviour of those " that feared Jeho
vah," " that thought upon his name," and that, in a
juster interpretation of his providence, " spake to one
another " of his equity and of their privileges. Them
he would recognize as his OAvn property ; he would
" spare them as a father spareth his own son " in that
approaching day when he would make manifest " the
difference between the righteous and the wicked, be
tween him who serveth God and him who serveth him
not." The day was coming, which was to " burn as
an oven," when all proud and wicked men should be
consumed like stubble, and neither root nor branch of
them be left. But on Jehovah's sincere worshippers
should arise " the sun of deliverance, with healing un
der its wings," and they should " go forth and leap
for joy, like calves of the stall," and in their trium
phant gambols " tread down the wicked as dust, under
the soles of their feet."* The malcontents cannot
expect that Jehovah will distinguish them with such
favor as they insolently claim, while they continue in
their present mind, or even that he will fail to " smite
the land with a curse." Let them call to mind Mo
ses' law, and study and observe it better. It seems as
if Jehovah will have to send another Elijah, another
reformer, another restorer of the law, before they will
be fit to receive the blessings he desires to bestow, or
to escape the curse they are provoking."]"
* Mai. iii. 13 -iv. 3.
f iv. 4-6. — "He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children,
and the heart of the children to their fathers " (6) ; with many critics, I un
derstand this to mean, " he shall turn the hearts of fathers and children,

LIII.] MALACHI. 503
Three periods are quoted from Malachi in the New
Testament.* Three passages are specially indicated
by Hengstenberg as predictions of the Messiah.f I
have already given my view of the true sense of each
in its place.

young and old, that is, the whole people ; comp. Gen. xxxii. 11 ; Amos
iii. 15.
* Viz. Mai. i. 2, 3, comp. Rom. ix. 13; Mai. iii. 1, comp. Matt. xi.
10, Mark i. 2, Luke vii. 27 ; Mai. iv. 6, comp. Luke i. 17.
f Viz. i. 11; ii. 17 -iii.6 ; iii- 13 -iv. 6.

END OF VOL. III.